The findings are closely linked to its report for the second quarter where mobile threats were once under the spotlight as one of the fastest growing areas of concern for consumers and businesses alike. The latest report's findings, however, suggest consumers should be alert and cautious during the holiday shopping season to protect personal and financial data from being compromised.
"With the pervasiveness and ease of use of online banking, we as consumers trust these applications almost blindly," says Gregory Anderson, country manager at Trend Micro South Africa. "It is worrying that our Security Roundup Reports consistently highlight online banking as an area for concern and we want to urge consumers to be vigilant when using online banking sites. You must ask questions of the security employed by your bank, as well as ensure you yourself are secured on all devices you access these applications from."
Another area highlighted by the report is that while Apple has been traditionally perceived as a safe haven against threats, the company's findings reveal that personal information of its users can be jeopardised as phishing scams that target the platform continue to gain momentum. According to Anderson, this evidence suggests a potential perfect storm looming in the holiday season as busy commercial and consumer users leverage mobile platforms.
In respect to the report's findings, it has revealed that after a spike of 5,800, Apple-related phishing sites have remained steady throughout the third quarter with 4,100 detected in July, 1 900 in August and 2,500 in September. This raises concern of potential new targets with analysts estimating Apple to sell 31 million iPhones and 15 million iPads in the fourth quarter alone.
To substantiate the banking concerns, Trend Micro researchers also identified more than 200,000 malware infections targeting online banking in the third quarter. Three countries stood out as the most targeted, with the US accounting for 23% of online banking malware infections worldwide, followed by Brazil with 16% and Japan with 12%.
Europe's top countries, Germany and France, had only 3% each which may stem from the regions high degree of multi-factor authentication requirements with online banking transactions. Along with these increases, the level of sophisticated obfuscation techniques used by threat actors has also risen.
"While the above-mentioned countries have been singled out as the worst hit, we cannot discount the effects the online banking threats pose for us here in South Africa, particularly with the rise in the use of smartphones. In our region we at Trend Micro are trying to work with businesses to create awareness around mobile security threats as until now it has been an area in which many are playing possum, some are avoiding, and others in our industry are simply saying doesn't exist and as a result will have no impact on the end user which couldn't be further from the truth. The people who lose in this blinkered approach adopted by our industry is the consumer," ends Anderson.
