Malware kept making its way into Google Play as attacks on mobile devices increased in 2023: Report

Attacks on mobile devices reached 33.8 million, marking an increase of 50% from the previous year.

Cybercriminals frequently use both official and unofficial app stores to distribute mobile threats. one of the most common disguises to distribute threats for 2023 was fake investment apps that relied on social engineering tactics to extract personal data from users, primarily phone numbers and full names.

Numerous malicious applications were also found on the Google Play store and third-party marketplaces. Malicious WhatsApp and Telegram mods designed to steal user data are also being distributed on the platform, a report from Kaspersky said.

The most common threat to mobile devices was found to be adware, constituting 40.8% of all threats detected. Also, over 1.3 million malicious installation packages were detected throughout the year, of which 154,000 contained a mobile banking Trojan.

Users in Turkey experienced the greatest variety of threats concentrated within a single country in 2023. And while the number of unique installation packages for malware dropped in 2022, suggesting malicious actors were more frequently using the same packages to infect different victims.