"Kaspersky Lab" recorded an explosive growth in the number of Trojans-extortionists attacking mobile devices - primarily smartphones and tablets running the Android operating system.

In the first quarter of this year, it was found 218,625 installation packages of mobile malware with the functionality of extortionists. This is 3.5 times more than in the previous quarter, when it was found 61 832 packages.

It is noted that more than 86% of the malicious programs were representatives of the Congur family. Usually these programs have very simple functionality - they change the PIN of the device (or set their own if it was not there before), and then they are asked to contact cybercriminals through the QQ-messenger to unlock. It is worth noting that there are modifications to this Trojan that can take advantage of existing superuser privileges to install your module into the system folder. This makes it extremely difficult to remove a malicious program.

In the last quarter, one of the representatives of the Fusob family was particularly active: more than 45% of users who were attacked by mobile extortioners around the world. After the launch, this Trojan requests administrator rights, collects information about the device, and then downloads it to the server of intruders. After that, he can receive a command to lock the device.

In January-March, mobile extortionists most often attacked users in the US.