The majority of the population in developed countries has integrated mobile banking into their everyday lives surprisingly quickly and seamlessly. The adoption of mobile banking was successful because financial institutions and fintechs ensured that the applications were user-friendly, convenient, and extremely secure.
However, since financial gains from finding loopholes in mobile banking applications tend to be sky-high, hackers are working day and night to figure out how to break into these apps.
While the mobile banking industry is in its golden age, the amount of attention from cybercriminals is also at an all-time high.
According to Atlas VPN investigation, the number of mobile banking trojans reached a record-breaking 109,561 detections in H1 2022, representing a 117% increase over the 50,450 detections in H2 2021.
The data for the analysis was extracted from Kaspersky’s official website, where the company shares data collected from its users.
Nearly half (49.28%) of the detections in H1 2022 were part of the Trojan-Banker.AndroidOS.Bray family. This malware type is considered to be a severe threat to the infected system.
Mobile trojans are designed to target mobile financial applications in order to commit on-device fraud and siphon cash straight from victims’ accounts.
Victims (sometimes) get their funds back
Cybercriminals tend to backward-rationalize their fraudulent acts by stating that their victims usually get their funds back, so the actual losses are incurred by the banking institutions instead.