Report: US Bank Suffered 513 Trojan Attacks in 2015

 

 A Symantec threat report has revealed that an unnamed United States bank was struck with 513 financial Trojans last year alone.

The unnamed bank, which is also a Symantec client was at the receiving end of 78.2 percent of all financial Trojans detected by the security firm in 2015. It is unknown if any of the banking Trojans gained entry into the bank’s networks, reports The Register.

The bank, one of 547 organizations that count themselves as Symantec clients, all of whom who have been hit by 656 trojans, as detected by the security firm.

Because of the dizzying number of attacks, it is unlikely that the bank survived unscathed, according to Symantec security researcher Candid Wueest.

Wueest added that criminals are using more capable Trojans, even though they are frequently unknown and not entirely diverse. Notably, the number of different Trojans fell by 75 percent last year when compared to 2014.

“Fluctuations are partially due to takedowns, arrests, and the efficacy of different trojan families,” Wueest says.

“Although there was a significant drop in financial trojan detections, the prevalent malware families have become far more capable,” he added.

Malware authors behind financial Trojans and banking malware are also targeting banks directly, rather than looking banks’ users. Phishing in its various forms is still the preferred method to gain entry into a network and has remained so, perennially.

The report also revealed that businesses in the United States were the most Trojan-targeted in the world with Symantec counting up to 141 organizations. The countries that followed the United States are Germany and India.

The most dominant Trojans targeted an average of 93 organizations last year. That resembles a searing 232 percent increase from 2014.

The figures are certain to be influenced by the rapid rise of ransomware which is taking away malware authors from developing banking Trojans to write ransomware malware instead.

Wueest further added that improvements to security software will help everyday users and organizations in protecting them against ransomware and malware.

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