Report reveals new mobile app collusion threats

‘McAfee Labs Threats Report: June 2016’ explains the dynamics of mobile app collusion, where cybercriminals manipulate two or more apps to orchestrate attacks capable of exfiltrating user data, inspecting files, sending fake SMS messages, loading additional apps without user consent, and sending user location information to control servers.

McAfee Labs has observed such behavior across more than 5,000 versions of 21 apps designed to provide useful user services such as mobile video streaming, health monitoring, and travel planning. Unfortunately, the failure of users to regularly implement essential software updates to these 21 mobile apps raises the possibility that older versions could be commandeered for malicious activity.

The report has identified three types of threats that can result from mobile app collusion: information theft, financial theft and service misuse. Also, the Q1 2016 statistics reveal that new ransomware samples rose 24%, new mobile malware samples grew 17% and macro malware continues on the growth trajectory begun in 2015 with a 42% quarter over quarter increase in new macro malware samples.

This quarter’s report also documents the return of the W32/Pinkslipbot Trojan (also known as Qakbot, Akbot, QBot). This backdoor Trojan with worm-like abilities initially launched in 2007 and quickly earned a reputation for being a damaging, high-impact malware family capable of stealing banking credentials, email passwords, and digital certificates.