Financial institutions and payments companies continue to be the major targets of cyber criminals in the second quarter (Q2) of 2017 according to a research released by ThreatMetrix.
ThreatMetrix, a global cyber security company, released its 2017 Q2 Cybercrime Report last week in which it said the level of global cyber crime attacks has increased from the previous two years and steadily rose over the same period in three years.
The report which is based on actual cybercrime attacks from April to June noted that growth in attack volumes grew steadily quarter-on-quarter making Q2 2017 the biggest attack quarter with over 144 million attacks.
Growth in attacks also outpaced transaction growth illustrating the heightened risk levels over the previous years with almost 100 percent more attacks in Q2 compared to 2015.
Account creation attacks grew near 30 percent across all use cases. The report stated that new account creation fraud currently represents more than one in every ten new applications. 47 percent transactions now come from mobile devices, rising to 55 percent for new account creations highlighting the growing level of engagement consumers have with opening and managing key accounts on their devices.
Key drivers of growth in account creation fraud is the increased availability and low cost of stolen identities in the wild, as cyber criminals buy and trade stolen identity data to create near-perfect identities to use in large-scale attacks.
Recorded incidences of cyber breaches in 2017, point to the evolving strategies of cyber criminals which seem to be moving from isolated attacks on large businesses and institutions to networked attacks targeting multiple key infrastructures and organisations.
ThreatMetrix notes that cyber criminals have shifted to identity information as their primary ammunition haven gained access to the latest tools to launch mass scale attacks.
Majority of the attacks in the second quarter originated more from Middle-Eastern and Eastern European geographies including Croatia, Egypt, Georgia, Hungary, Israel, Morocco and Turkey.
“What is clear is that breached identity data is filtering down to countries across the globe, and that cybercrime is becoming ever more global and networked,” ThreatMetrix stated in its report.
The global e-commerce industry experienced 88 million attacks in the second quarter, an increase of 41 percent year-on-year.
Overall login transactions have also increased reaching 35 percent year-on-year and mobile logins 46 percent. Mobile transactions, hence, continue to lead financial services growth and present a fertile field for cyber attacks as well. Mobile account creations keep growing faster than any other use case – 141 percent year-on-year – as users are embracing mobile banking as a full-service operation.
The report notes that account creation attacks have continued to grow at 200 percent compared to 2015 largely driven by the availability of complete user credentials on the dark web that fraudsters look to monetise by applying for new loans or other financial products.
