Symantec Reports Significant Drop in Financial Malware during 2014

Symantec in its new whitepaper titled "Security Response: State of Financial Trojans 2014" reveals that financial malware infections declined considerably during 2014. The financial Trojans commonly found reduced remarkably at 53%.

In this connection Candid Wueest Security Researcher with Symantec said that financial malware infections declined partly due to certain arrest and shutdown maneuvers that various agencies of law enforcement conducted in a joint initiative with security firms. Cso.com.au reported this, March 5, 2015.

Disturbingly, the maximum infections were spotted in USA, with United Kingdom and Germany following serially.

The maximum number of targeted organizations was based within USA and these were attacked with 95% of the information stealing Trojans.

Wueest continued that within USA, there were the most number of institutions suitable for attack since a lot of them carried out Internet banking while possessed greater wealth generally, thus putting USA on top of the attackers' list of potential targets with respect to revenue/contamination. Moreover, in global criminal activity, English language was the most comprehended, he added.

Overall, Trojans targeted accountholders with 1,467 financial institutions.

Wueest blogged that although certain malware Trojans, particularly Trojan.Shylock, almost vanished, the fresh Infostealer.Dyranges type of spin-off threats along with others filled the vacuum. Securityweek.com published this, March 4, 2015.

Surprisingly, number of conventional phishing e-mails too declined in 2014.

Symantec reports that during December 2014, one e-mail out of 195 that the company examined had one malicious attachment, a rise by 16% from the annual mean. There was a URL leading onto some malevolent website within 14% of the phishing electronic mails. There was 74% drop in traditional phishing assaults, during 2014, through which users typically were enticed towards certain fraudulent site which deceived them into disclosing their sensitive details. Such phishing assaults hadn't been aimed at institutions of finance over sometime therefore weren't waged against the sector; however, they continued to be employed against e-mail services or social-networking websites.

But such malicious attacks can be lessened if users handle unsolicited, unanticipated else dubious e-mails with caution, update operating systems and anti-virus software to their latest versions, and utilize sturdy passwords for each of their accounts, Symantec suggests.

» SPAMfighter News - 3/13/2015