A recent discovery by the Zscaler ThreatLabz research team revealed that over 200 apps on the Google Play Store, which were downloaded nearly eight million times, have been identified as malicious.
The report highlights that Nigeria ranks among the top 10 countries targeted by mobile malware attackers, alongside India, the US, Canada, South Africa, the Netherlands, Mexico, Brazil, Singapore, and the Philippines.
As mobile devices have become the primary means for online activity, with 96.5% of internet users accessing the web through their phones, the report notes a surge in cyber threats on mobile platforms.
Based on 20 million blocked malicious transactions, the Zscaler report indicates a 29% increase in banking malware attacks over the past year, with mobile spyware incidents skyrocketing by 111%. This significant rise is attributed to the lucrative nature of cyberattacks, with many cybercriminals now able to bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA).
“Even apps from official stores like the Google Play Store have been compromised. Over 200 malicious apps, which collectively received nearly eight million downloads, were uploaded to the platform. Google confirmed that these apps have been removed following their identification,” the report stated....Read Full Article [Click Here>]
Among the identified apps, the most common malware family was Joker, which constituted 38% of the total. “Trojans continue to dominate the Android threat landscape, accounting for 43% of all malicious payloads. Banking malware, in particular, heavily relies on trojans, with Zscaler blocking 3.6 million threats associated with these types of attacks,” it added.
However, researchers observed a recent decline in Android malware activity, with the number of blocked malicious transactions dropping to one-third of the figures from June 2023 by May 2024.
Despite this decline, Zscaler recorded an average of 1.7 million Android malware blocks per month over the past year, based on the analysis of more than 20 million threat-related mobile transactions.
