AWARENESS: MOBILE BANKING WILL SUFFER FROM MORE MAN-IN-THE-MIDDLE ATTACKS .

BASIC TWO-STEP VERIFICATION WILL NO LONGER BE SUFFICIENT

The past year saw a notable surge in online banking threats. The third quarter saw the infection count pass the 200,000 mark, the highest it has ever been. But banking threats were not limited to computers; we also saw them go mobile. Fake banking apps became a common problem.

Banking-related apps also became a favored cybercriminal target; led malicious apps posing as token generators. Going mobile unintentionally rendered two-step verification insufficient as more people used mobile devices for banking and authentication, cybercriminals started intercepting authentication numbers with the aid of mobile malware like PERKEL and ZITMO. Nearly one in five U.S. smartphone users banked via mobile devices in 2013, a number that is expected to rise more in the coming years. 2014 will be about mobile banking. Unfortunately, we can also expect mobile threats like man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks to increase in 2014.

Android will remain the most dominant OS in the market, But this dominance will continue to be exploited, as we predict the volume of malicious and high-risk Android apps to reach 3 million by the end of 2014. Though Google did exert effort to address this, most recently with the release of Android KitKat, not all users can take advantage of new security features due to the OS’s heavily fragmented update process.

New OSs like Tizen, Sailfish, and Firefox that boast of having an Android compatibility layer will enter the mobile market. On the upside, this layer will allow Android apps to run on the OSs but may also make it easier for cybercriminals to create multiplatform threats.” - ITU 

- Trend Micro