The banking sector is the main target of online criminal attacks in Brazil. According to data from Fortinet Threat Intelligence Insider Latin America, a security solutions company, most criminals aim to enter bank networks, obtain financial information and steal money from people or companies. In addition, Brazil was the country that suffered most from cyber attacks: there were an average of 65 million per day, totaling 24 billion criminal attempts in 2019 alone.
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Latin America becomes one of the main targets of attacks on financial institutions – Photo: Darwin Laganzon / Pixabay
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Another fact that draws attention in the survey is the increase in phishing scams, which use fake links, usually sent by email. The objectives of criminals are the most diverse, such as spreading Trojans that allow them to take control of infected devices, spreading viruses that filter data of interest to criminals, or spreading malware that lets hackers access computers remotely. In 2019 alone, Latin America suffered 85 billion attempted attacks.
Also according to Fortinet, the region also recorded the majority of attacks on cryptocurrencies in the world. The main threats detected in such scams were: Riskware / CoinMiner malware, with 77% of global incidences, and W64 / CoinMiner.QU Trojans! .Tr and JS / Coinhive.A! .Tr, with 84% and 59% of occurrences in the world, respectively.
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The main threats to the banking sector were the Trojan DoublePulsar and botnet EMOTET. The first is a backdoor used by WannaCry that takes advantage of vulnerabilities that have already been resolved. Its use is mainly directed at banks and financial services companies, which shows the presence of software without updates in these companies. EMOTET, which targets banks, targets Windows, allowing the attacker to control the machine remotely. 45% of the appearances of this threat occurred in Latin America.
Brazil was one of the most frequent targets for online criminals in 2019. Altogether there were 24 billion attempts, which means 65 million attacks per day. The trojans most used in attacks here in the fourth quarter of the year were: JS / Coinhive.A! Tr, W32 / Banito.B! Tr.bdr and W32 / Kryptik.GMMJ! Tr. Generally, their activities are linked to the remote access connection by the criminal. Again, these scams reinforce the importance of not clicking malicious links on the Internet.
