What to expect from cyber fraudsters in 2022 - expert predictions

[Carding Forum]

One of the key topics at the eCom21 conference in Riga this year was the security of electronic payments both in the CIS countries, Europe, and around the world. Pavel Krylov, Head of Product Development at Group-IB, presented the key trends in the development of cybersecurity in 2021 and announced the main forecasts in this area.

“E-commerce crimes today are a kind of fusion of IT technology and social engineering. It is possible to predict some surge in cybercrime in Europe and the United States, since, as we had the opportunity to observe, a significant part of “Russian-speaking” hackers and criminal groups shifted their focus and “left” the Russian market. Another trend is the growth of mobile threats. We expect a noticeable increase in Trojans for Android that are “focused” on collecting bank card data, ”Pavel said.

Basic forecasts for Russia and the CIS countries:

• Attacks on individual bank customers using Trojans for personal computers will stop.
• The number of thefts from legal entities through remote banking services (RBS) using a remote connection will increase.
• The number of incidents and the amount of stolen funds will increase due to the interception of bank card data, logins and passwords for Internet banking on Android devices.
• The number of phishing incidents against bank customers will increase as a result of the emergence of new criminal groups and the automation of the theft of funds.
• The number of incidents with POS terminals will continue to grow, as the number of programs for these purposes is constantly growing. Some of these programs are in the public domain.
• The number of cases of fraud in the course of CNP transactions (card not present) will increase.
• The number of targeted attacks will continue to grow due to new players, but their effectiveness in quantitative terms will remain low.

The expert also voiced several forecasts for Europe and the United States:

• Fraud will rise as the area of interest for Russian-speaking hackers and fraudulent groups has expanded to include Europe and the United States.
• The number of cases of infection of Android devices with Trojans will increase due to the possibility of obtaining bank card data and committing fraudulent transactions from mobile devices.
• The number of ATM cash theft incidents will rise as many malware programmers remain uncaught.
• POS fraud will become more sophisticated, and attacks to intercept users' banking data will increase.
• There will be more incidents involving attacks on trading systems due to an increase in the number of Trojans targeting their activities.

As a reminder, Group-IB is an international company for the prevention and investigation of cybercrimes and frauds.