Brazil becomes top country in online banking fraud

The research conducted by Kaspersky Lab lists Brazil as the country with the largest number of users attacked by banking malware, followed by Russia and Germany.

Findings indicate some 299,830 users falling victim to banking malware in Brazil from November 2013 to October 2014. Second on the list is Russia with 251,917 attacked users and Germany, with 155,773 malware attacks in 2014. The number of attacks grew considerably in the middle of 2014, surpassing 300,000 occurrences in May and reaching 350,000 in June.

According to the study, reasons for the spike in malware attacks include online banking activity at the beginning of the holiday season as well as by the World Cup in Brazil, when cybercriminals used financial malware to steal tourists payment data.

In matters of trojans, ZeuS remained the most widespread banking trojan in the world, while the Brazilian malware ChePro and Lohmys came second and third on the list.