• Kaspersky’s Financial Cyberthreats report reveals alarming trends from the last year.
• Mobile banking trojan detections increased by 3.6X while crypto-related cybercrimes rose 83.4 percent.
• Amazon was among the most imitated brands leveraged by cybercriminals in 2024.

Kaspersky has released its Financial Cyberthreats report for last year, and unsurprisingly, the number of people targeted by scammers and criminals has increased.

In 2024, Kaspersky highlighted that the number of users encountering mobile banking Trojans rose by 3.6 times compared to 2023. Crypto cybercrime-related detections increased 83.4 percent.

While cybercriminals trying to get access to a bank account is nothing new, the number of phishing attacks using banks as a lure increased from 38.5 percent of all attacks detected in 2023 to 42.6 percent in 2024. Clearly, this is an attack vector worth pursuing for cybercriminals and more reason to treat emails and text messages claiming to be from your bank with more skepticism.

South Africans may also want to take note of the second most lucrative lure for cybercriminals – brands, with Amazon being the most attractive brand to imitate.

While the online galleria is still new to South Africa, it has long been a lure used by cybercriminals. Attacks besmirching the good name of Amazon accounted for 33.2 percent of all attacks imitating brands. In second was Apple, although a 3 percentage point drop suggests Apple isn’t as lucrative a lure as in previous years. Scams using the Netflix brand increased 16 percent in 2024.

“In 2024, financial phishing and scams increased in numbers and reached a new level of sophistication, unleashing waves of attacks on users. Fraudsters are increasingly leveraging fake brands and services to get user data, and the popularity of smartphones for financial transactions only fuels their appetite. Looking ahead, we expect financial phishing to become even more personalised and targeted, focusing on exploiting vulnerabilities in everyday digital habits, which will demand increased vigilance and thorough approaches to protection,” comments Olga Svistunova, senior web content analyst at Kaspersky.

Kaspersky also highlights that cybercrime operations targeting cryptocurrency are on the rise. The company says it prevented over 10 million attempts to steal cryptocurrency, an 83.4 percent increase compared to 2023. In fact, most malware these days is intent on stealing crypto rather than banking credentials. We suspect this is because crypto is easier to hide and move around than fiat currency is.

This increase in attempts to steal funds suggests that we should all take cybercrime just a little bit more seriously. We, as always, recommend that when you receive a communication from a financial institution, rather navigate to the website yourself instead of clicking links. Check URLs and take oddities as a sign that things aren’t right. 

Just last week, the owner of Have I Been Pwned, Troy Hunt, was the subject of a breach in which his password manager may have acted as a warning that the site he was on, wasn’t legitimate. Of course, there are other factors, but you can save yourself a world of hurt if you visit websites manually rather than use links that could be hiding phishing websites or direct you to download malware.