Malicious programs targeting Android-based devices in order to steal their owners’ money were used in 60% of attacks registered by Kaspersky Lab security products.
Research the security vendor and INTERPOL examined threats encountered between August 2013 and July 2014.
The fraudsters mostly targeted users in Russia, but Ukraine, Spain, the UK, Vietnam, Malaysia, Germany, India and France also faced attacks.
In absolute terms, there were more than 588,000 Android users worldwide who faced financial malware (Trojan-SMS and Trojan-Banker) during the reporting period. That is six times greater than the number from the equivalent period 12 months earlier.
Overall, 57.08% of all reported incidents involved attacks utilizing programs from the Trojan SMS malware family. These are designed to send messages to short premium-rate numbers without the owner’s knowledge.
Russia was on the receiving end of the greatest number of Trojan SMS attacks with 64.42% of all Kaspersky Lab anti-virus detections registered on devices of users from this country.
About a quarter of Trojan-SMS attacks were detected in Kazakhstan (5.71%), Ukraine (3.32%), Spain (3.19%), the UK (3.02%), Vietnam (2.41%), Malaysia (2.3%), Germany (2%), India (1.55%) and France (1.32%).
Another 1.98% of attacks used Trojan-Banker malware which, when combined with Trojan-SMS functionality, can steal bank card data as well as usernames and passwords for online banking services.
Russia is on top of this chart as well with 90.58% of all Trojan-Banker detections registered on the territory of the Russian Federation.