What comes to your mind when you think about 2020? Pandemic, lockdown, irreversible changes, right? Last year, we also dealt with a cyber pandemic, and honestly, we are still facing it. However, this article doesn’t talk about all the attacks, but only about mobile malware. Let’s check out what’s going on in that department.
The scoop
As per the Mobile Malware Evolution 2020 report by Kaspersky, mobile threats took a slight dip over the past year. No, this isn’t a piece of happy news because threat actors are now focusing more on the quality of attacks instead of quantity. Mobile adware accounted for 57% of attacks, thus, leading the list. It was followed by risk tools at 21%, mobile trojans and trojan droppers at 4.5%, and SMS-based trojans at 4%.
Beware of
Ewind. This adware family totaled 65% of all adware samples, with FakeAdBlocker and HiddenAd right at its heels. The reason for its success is that almost 2 million Ewind.kp Android installer packages were hidden in legitimate apps.
In the case of iPhones and iPads, the major threat was posed by drive-by downloads exploiting WebKit. The LightSpy trojan was deployed as a payload whose job was to extract personal information from the devices.
Trends observed
- The pandemic theme was frequently observed in mobile threats. The words covid, corona, and coronavirus, among other related terms, were used by and large.
- As already mentioned, adware was another trend that gained huge popularity among cybercriminals.
- Online banking was the prime target for threat actors as a means to monetize the stolen personal credential of victims.
Some stats your way
- Iran was the most affected country by mobile malware, accounting for a ginormous 67.78%, followed by Algeria (31.29%), and Bangladesh (26.18%).
- In 2020, adware posed the most common threat at 57.26%, which is a huge increase from 2019 (21.81%).
- The number of backdoors tripled in 2020 at 84,495 as compared to that in 2019 (28,889).
The bottom line
The mobile threat landscape was hugely impacted by the pandemic as it opened up a greater attack surface for threat actors. While the first half of 2020 witnessed a decrease in these attacks, attackers were back to haunting mobile users in the second half. In addition, online banking was targeted by attackers for the ludicrous data. In short, the mobile threat landscape has evolved and is still undergoing development, which implies that users need to be more careful of their devices and check their Accessibility settings.
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