Online money theft on rise: Kaspersky

According to a survey carried out jointly by Kaspersky Lab and B2B International, over a one-year period almost half of the users who responded faced online threats involving attempted money theft. However, non-financial cyber-attacks can result in unforeseen expenses as well.

Cybercriminals obtain valuable user data through a variety of methods. The quickest way of digging into users’ wallets is to gain access to their accounts for payment systems, online banking or online shops that store bank card data. There are numerous techniques to collect this information, including phishing pages, which imitate the official websites of the relevant institutions, malware that collects logins and passwords as users enter them on their devices, and many more.

According to the survey, 43% of users faced financial cyber-attacks during the past year, with 5% of respondents reportedly losing money as a result. This proportion is significantly higher (9%) among active users of Android tablets. When explaining how they lost the money, 16% of respondents stated that hackers had stolen their money by gaining access to their payment services accounts, 11% believed they had fallen for fraudsters’ tricks and entered their credentials on a fake website and 7% were sure that their logins and passwords had been intercepted by malware. The average amount stolen from each user was $218, but one victim in five lost over $1,000 to this type of online fraud.

During the year, many users’ online accounts – email, social networking, etc. – were hacked. This was reported by 14% of respondents. In addition to being used by cybercriminals to send spam and malicious URLs, compromised accounts can be a source of financial losses. Information that can be found in a user’s mailbox often includes account credentials sent by payment services and online stores in response to registration and password recovery requests.

In addition, 31% of respondents reported a malware-related incident within the past year, with one incident in five resulting in financial losses. The average damage caused by malware amounted to $161 including, among other costs, expenses associated with mitigating the consequences of infection, getting help from IT experts and purchasing specialized software.

“Some users regard cyber-threats as some sort of remote entities that can only do damage in cyberspace. However, many online threats have clear implications for our lives in the real world – be it lost data or stolen money. Rather than paying for the consequences, it makes much more sense to take care of your security beforehand,” said Elena Kharchenko, Head of Consumer Product Management, Kaspersky Lab.

Kaspersky Lab has developed an extensive arsenal of Internet security tools. Kaspersky Internet Security — Multi-Device andKaspersky Total Security — Multi-Device include, in addition to anti-malware and anti-phishing tools, the Safe Money technology designed to provide additional protection for financial transactions under Windows and OS X. Kaspersky Password Manager, the cross-platform solution for securely storing passwords included in Kaspersky Total Security — Multi-Device, enables users to create and store strong website and application passwords, helping to increase the security of online accounts.