Cyberattacks targeting mobile devices has skyrocketed, with incidents nearly hitting the 33.8 million mark, a hefty 50% jump from the previous year. Adware, which bombards users with unwanted ads, emerged as the top threat, accounting for over 40% of all detected issues.
As industry leaders convened at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Kaspersky unveiled its yearly review of the mobile threat environment. The findings show an alarming trend: attacks on mobile devices are climbing sharply. In fact, the total number of attacks in 2023 was 33,790,599—a stark increase of roughly 52% from the 22,255,956 incidents in 2022.
Adware proved to be the most common nuisance for mobile users, making up 40.8% of all threats identified by Kaspersky. On a slightly more positive note, the instances of banking Trojans—malicious programs designed to siphon off banking credentials—saw a decrease in distribution packages to 153,682. However, the frequency of attacks involving these banking Trojans has remained relatively stable.

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Attackers are known to disseminate mobile threats through both authorized and unauthorized app platforms. Throughout 2023, Kaspersky’s analysts spotted numerous harmful apps sneaking into Google Play.
Notably, fake investment applications were particularly rampant; these apps used social engineering to dupe users into handing over personal details like phone numbers and full names. This information would then be funneled into databases that could be exploited for telephone scams. Other observed attack methods included compromised versions of popular messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram, which aimed to steal user data.