Mekotio Banking Trojan Threatens Financial Systems in Latin America


The Mekotio banking trojan is a sophisticated piece of malware that has been active since at least 2015, primarily targeting Latin American countries with the goal of stealing sensitive information — particularly banking credentials — from its targets.

Originating in the Latin American region, it has been particularly prolific in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Spain, and Peru. Furthermore, Mekotio seems to share a common origin with other notable Latin American banking malware such as Grandoreiro, which was disrupted by law enforcement earlier this year. Mekotio is often delivered through phishing emails, employing social engineering to trick users into interacting with malicious links or attachments. Trend Micro recently seen a surge in attacks involving Mekotio among their customers.

Read more…
Source: Trend Micro


Sign up for our Newsletter


Related:

  • A look at the ATM/PoS malware landscape from 2017-2019

    April 23, 2020

    From remote administration and jackpotting, to malware sold on the Darknet, attacks against ATMs have a long and storied history.  And, much like other areas of cybercrime, attackers only refine and grow their skillset for infecting ATM systems from year-to-year. So what does the ATM landscape look like as of 2020? Let’s take a look. ATM attacks aren’t ...

  • Financial Cyberthreats in 2019

    April 16, 2020

    Financial cyberthreats are malicious programs that target users of services such as online banking, e-money, and cryptocurrency, or that attempt to gain access to financial organizations and their infrastructure. These threats are usually accompanied by spam and phishing activities, with malicious users creating fake financial-themed pages and emails to steal victims’ credentials. In order to study ...

  • Threat Spotlight: Gootkit Banking Trojan

    April 14, 2020

    Gootkit is a sophisticated banking Trojan which can perform various malicious activities such as: web injection, taking screenshots, video recording, email parsing, and so on. Gootkit emerged during the summer of 2014 but is still active, making it a viable threat to financial institutions to this day. BlackBerry most recently observed a Gootkit campaign via AZORult infostealer ...

  • Overlay Malware Leverages Chrome Browser, Targets Banks and Heads to Spain

    April 14, 2020

    Researchers are warning of a remote overlay malware attack that leverages a fake Chrome browser plugin to target the accounts of banking customers in Spain. Grandoreiro is a type of remote overlay banking trojan, designed to help attackers overtake devices and display a full-screen overlay image when victim accesses their online banking account. In the background, meanwhile, the ...

  • Travelex Pays $2.3M in Bitcoin to Hackers Who Hijacked Network in January

    April 10, 2020

    Travelex has paid out $2.3 million in Bitcoin to hackers to regain access to its global network after a malware attack at the new year knocked the global currency exchange offline and crippled its business during the month of January. The move—reported by the Wall Street Journal—may seem counterintuitive, as experts in the past have typically recommended that companies ...

  • FIN6 and TrickBot Combine Forces in ‘Anchor’ Attacks

    April 7, 2020

    Researchers say, two cybercriminal groups, FIN6 and the operators of the TrickBot malware, have paired up together to target several organizations with TrickBot’s malware framework called “Anchor.” The two threat groups joining forces is a “new and dangerous twist” in an existing trend of cybercrime groups working together, say researchers with IBM X-Force. The FIN6 group (also known as “ITG08”) has ...