As mobile transactions rise, hackers see mobile phones as a lucrative target

As more and more people go for digital transactions on their mobile devices, hackers seem to have increased their focus on these transactions.

With the nationwide lockdown and working-from-home making people spend more time at home and using mobile devices for various payments, one has to be more careful while accessing the financial apps, including the banking windows, cyber security experts said.

Steep rise

The number of mobile trojans has seen a sharp increase in the first quarter of 2020. Cyber security experts noticed 42,115 files of malicious software in the first quarter, which is two-and-half times more than the number in the fourth quarter of 2019.

The mobile banking trojans are a well-known threat in the cyber-community. Used to steal funds directly from mobile bank accounts, these malicious programmes can make you mistake them for a legitimate financial app.

“When a victim tries to access their genuine bank app and enter their security credentials, the attackers gain access to that information as the mobile is already infected with the malware,” Victor Chebyshev, a security expert at Kaspersky, has said.

In the first quarter of this year, the cyber security solutions firm detected over 42,000 modifications of various families of banking trojans, the highest level recorded in last 18 months. “In the age of social distancing and lockdown, we are all using our mobile devices more often to use financial services,” Victor Chebyshev pointed out.

How to be safe?

To reduce the risk of your device being infected by banking trojans, he advised the users to install applications only from trusted sources.

The users are also advised to use cyber security solutions to protect the device from malicious software.