Mobile fraud rates rose by nearly a quarter in the first half of the year, as crooks followed their victims to the increasingly popular digital commerce channel.
According to ThreatMetrix, there were 150 million mobile fraud attacks around the world in the first half of 2018, up 24% on the same period the previous year. In the US, the growth was 44%.
This is in line with the rise in mobile commerce over the last three years. Mobile transactions - which include account creations, logins and payments - reached 58% of all traffic by the middle of 2018.
Globally, one third of all fraud attacks are now targeting mobile transactions but ThreatMetrix says that mobile is still more secure than desktop.
This is because mobile offers organisations unique opportunities for accurately assessing user identity, thanks to highly personalised device attributes, geo-location and behavioural analysis. It also offers strong customer authentication options that require no user intervention, including cryptographically binding devices for persistent authentication.
Meanwhile, ThreatMetrix says that financial institutions were besieged with 81 million cybercrime attacks in the first half of 2018. Of these, 27 million were targeting the mobile channel as fraudsters turn their attention to the success story that is mobile banking adoption.
Overall, the biggest threat in financial services comes from device spoofing, as fraudsters attempt to trick banks into thinking multiple fraudulent log in attempts are coming from new customer devices, perhaps by repeatedly wiping cookies or using virtual machines.