A global surge in mobile banking malware is reshaping the fraud landscape, targeting 1,243 financial brands across 90 countries, according to Zimperium zLabs. The firm’s latest report analysed 34 active malware families affecting apps with more than three billion downloads, describing campaigns as industrialised and large-scale.
Attacks are evolving faster than traditional banking defences, with more than 60% of banking apps lacking basic code protection, allowing criminals to reverse engineer systems and tailor assaults before targeting users. Modern malware now intercepts authentication codes, monitors live sessions and can masquerade as legitimate app behaviour, with three families—TsarBot, CopyBara and Hook—accounting for more than 60% of banking and fintech app targeting.
The US has the highest concentration with 162 targeted banking apps, followed by the UK (69), Spain (65) and Italy (52), while rapidly digitising markets such as India (42), Vietnam (23) and Malaysia (17) are also heavily targeted.