Cybercriminals discovered new methods and deployed advanced tactics to defraud mobile users during the pandemic, new research suggests.
A report published by security firm McAfee shows that, despite the fact many people were consigned to their homes, fraudsters redoubled efforts to steal data and financial information from mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.
In a previous iteration of the Mobile Threat Report, the company announced that hidden applications posed the greatest threat to mobile users, but attackers have now expanded their arsenal with new billing and banking fraud techniques and more.
Many of these attacks use pandemic-related themes to lure victims into clicking malicious links or triggering downloads that provide attackers with both information and, in some cases, control over the infected device.
“We’ve seen how the pandemic not only led to an increased dependence on mobile devices, but how it has prompted bad actors into developing new ways of tricking consumers and stealing their personal data. As well as these advanced forms of malware and deceit, we’ve seen that hackers are also returning to billing scams, but using new tricks,” explained Raj Samani, McAfee Fellow and Chief Scientist.
“As consumers continue to carry out daily activities on-the-go, it is critical that they stay educated and proactive about protecting their personal data.”
A common strategy among cybercriminals is to piggyback on newsworthy events, to encourage people to engage with fraudulent emails, SMS messages or applications. Since late last year, the vaccine rollout has acted as the perfect hook.
According to McAfee, attackers capitalized on anxiety surrounding Covid-19 to infect mobile devices with malware that generates revenue by serving up display ads and steals banking information, financial credentials and other personal data.
Analysis of malware trends suggests the vast majority (90%) of all pandemic-related threats took the form of trojans, a type of malware disguised as a legitimate application or service. For example, hackers created fake vaccination registration apps that demand access to SMS messages, spreading themselves further via the victim’s contact book.
Worryingly, some fraudulent applications were also distributed via official application stores, such as Google Play. In one particular instance, a series of applications masquerading as creative software were downloaded by 700,000 Android users before the threat was detected and addressed. The campaign saw victims infected with billing fraud malware capable of signing up to premium subscription services without the person’s knowledge or consent.
McAfee also registered a 141% increase in banking trojans between Q3 and Q4 2020, attributed in large part to the release of Cerberus source code, which gave rise to a number of imitation malware strains. This trojan family is known to intercept SMS messages and 2FA codes, as well as stealing financial details using overlays that sit atop banking and shopping applications.
Gazing into its crystal ball, McAfee believes this year will be characterized by “sneak attacks” and malware that abuses misinformation to gain a foothold. These attacks will be underpinned by new techniques developed by threat actors that make identifying malware infections all the more challenging.
To shield against mobile malware attacks, users are advised to download content from official app stores exclusively and to research the developer, to find out what other users have to say. Other strategies include protecting devices with antivirus software, ensuring all applications remain as up to date as possible and exercising caution when applications ask for new access permissions.
Lenovo says the the gaming laptop segment, which accounted for just 6% in terms of unit sales of the overall PC market last year, is expected to reach at least 10 to 11% this year.
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Read MoreAMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), Team Red’s upscaling rival for Nvidia DLSS, came out six months ago, and in celebration of that milestone, the company has revealed that there are now over 70 games that support the feature (or are about to). In total, AMD observes that FSR is now in 47 games, and will be in 24 upcoming titles, with support gained from over 80 game developers thus far, further noting that: “FSR has become the fastest adopted software gaming technology in AMD history.” Those games include some big-name efforts, like Deathloop, Horizon Zero Dawn, F1 2021, Far Cry 6, and Resident Evil Village, plus the likes of the incoming Baldur’s Gate 3 and Grounded which are currently in early access, and God of War (due to arrive on PC next month). AMD notes that with Radeon RX 6000 GPUs using FSR in performance mode (tailored for the fastest frame rates, rather than visual quality), gamers see an average of a 2.5x performance uplift at 4K resolution (as benchmarked by AMD across a selection of 10 games – so a pinch of salt around cherry-picking here, of course). AMD is making commendable progress with FSR, clearly, and the tech has also been brought to the Unity game engine (in October), plus there’s an Unreal Engine plug-in (which arrived in November), all of which should help to further drive its usage going forward (as devs using those engines can more easily implement FSR). For the unaware, the big difference with Nvidia DLSS compared to FSR is that Nvidia’s technology uses machine learning (AI) for refinement, which essentially represents a big boost in the quality department when it comes to the actual results of the upscaling. AMD has tried to make FSR better in different ways, namely making it an open standard (DLSS is proprietary) and by supporting older graphics cards (not just AMD GPUs, either, but even previous-gen Nvidia GPUs). Whereas DLSS is strictly for RTX cards only. Of course, there’s also Intel’s new GPUs on the horizon which will come with Team Blue’s own take on upscaling: XeSS. This is particularly interesting as it seems that Intel has decided to take a ‘best of both worlds’ approach, producing a solution which is driven and honed by AI like DLSS, but remains an open standard like FSR. While early results of XeSS look impressive, what we’ve witnessed has been provided as part of Intel’s hype machine for Arc Alchemist graphics cards, so they’re bound to show the tech in the best possible light, naturally. The danger is that AMD’s FSR could rather fall by the wayside compared to its AI-powered rivals, with the gap in the quality of upscaling becoming wider over time as DLSS and XeSS are further and continuously refined. But that said, if AMD sticks to its guns of making FSR relevant for those stuck with older GPUs – a lot of folks at the moment, it has to be said – that could be a viable long-term niche right here. Either that, or AMD works on its own AI take on upscaling down the line.
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