Australia third most targeted by banking botnets

Australia was the third most targeted nation in the world for banking botnets in 2015, according to research from Dell SecureWorks' Counter Threat Unit.

Banking botnets targeted customers of more than 95 Australian financial institutions during the year, the company's third annual Top Banking Botnets report shows.

The Citadel and IceIX were the most popular Trojans used to target Australian businesses during the year. Banking botnet operators also infected many of their Australian victims with ransomware for a lucrative additional revenue scheme.

During the year the top bank botnet operators expanded their target list to cover additional targets beyond financial institutions, online payment providers, social media sites and email providers.

The culprits were also going after credentials for cloud service providers, app stores, online tech stores and shipping and logistics organisations.

Dell's CTU said they are unaware why criminals are targeting warehouse and shipping company credentials, but speculated that it may be because botnet operators were seeking access to the services to store and ship high-priced items purchased with stolen payment cards or accounts.

Worldwide, attackers used banking trojans to target more than 1500 financial institutions across over 100 countries, with over 80% of these targets located in the US.

The UK ranked behind the US but ahead of Australia to be the second most targeted country, while the number of attacks in Asia and the Middle East continued to increase.

Image courtesy of Intel Free Press under CC