After the release of the NatWest banking app early this week it's no suprise to see that The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has also released a Windows Phone app. The two banks are both subsidiaries of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, and, branding aside, the two apps are almost identical. The key features of the app include the ability to view transaction history for accounts, pay bills or people, transfer funds between accounts, find the nearest cash machine or local branch, top up your pay as you go mobile phone, and more.
The core of the app is the banking functionality. It allows to see activity in your accounts at a glance (statement), transfer money between accounts (account transfer), pay bills (pay a person or bills), and send money to other users on the app using just their phone number (pay your contacts).
NatWest and RBS Banking apps come to Windows Phone 8
UK bank NatWest today published their mobile banking app for Windows Phone. The NatWest app allows customers of NatWest "to manage their money on the move". Key features include the ability to view transaction history for accounts, pay bills or people, transfer funds between accounts, find the nearest cash machine or local branch, top up your pay as you go mobile phone, and more.
There are numerous banking apps available for Windows Phone, with more being made available every month (e.g. an app from Belgium bank KBC was also released today), but NatWest is notable for being one of the first UK banks to support the platform. It's exactly this kind of app that is frequently given as an example when people talk about the "app gap" on Windows Phone. Clearly no banking app is universal, but banking apps in general are popular with consumers. They are great examples of apps that do well regionally (topping the charts in their home market), but form only part of the long tail on a global basis.
At Sibos this week, Microsoft customers and partners are showcasing new technology to help financial institutions become digital banks. This includes a host of new Windows 8 apps, demonstrations on how the cloud can help banks do business in underserved and emerging markets, and a new partnership with the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis center to help banks fight cybercrime.
Most smartphones now come with Near Field Communication (NFC) technology built-in to make contactless payments, allowing you to pay for everyday items like your tube journey or sandwich without your credit or debit card.
With so many loyalty schemes on offer it can be hard to find the space to carry all the cards around at once. But there are a range of apps available on smartphones that can store your cards digitally and keep them all in one place and with you wherever you go.
All the major banks and building societies have banking apps which can keep you up to date about your balance and provide alerts when you are running out of cash and some have developed more snazzier ones for those that what more information about spending.
Mobile banking apps have progressed well over the last couple of years and now offer customers the chance to view and manage their bank accounts directly from their mobile phone or tablet. For many Deaf/HoH people this is going to be far more convenient than trying to check your account or arrange a transation through someone working at the bank.
Barclays: =com.barclays.android.barclaysmobilebankingHalifax: =com.grppl.android.shell.halifaxHSBC: =com.htsu.hsbcpersonalbankingLloyds: =com.grppl.android.shell.CMBlloydsTSB73Nationwide: =co.uk.Nationwide.MobileNatWest: =com.rbs.mobile.android.natwestSantander: =uk.co.santander.santanderUK
Barclays: -gb/store/apps/barclays-mobile-banking/9wzdncrfhxg7HSBC: ---Lloyds: -gb/store/apps/lloyds-bank/9wzdncrfj10vNationwide: ---NatWest: -gb/store/apps/natwest/9wzdncrfhwltSantander: ---
It switches the colours of your screens, to give everything a black or dark background with white text and objects. You can use it on your phone or computer, on just specific apps or across a whole operating system.
Around May 2020 ThreatFabric analysts have uncovered a new strain of banking malware dubbed BlackRock that looked pretty familiar. After investigation, it became clear that this newcomer is derived from the code of the Xerxes banking malware, which itself is a strain of the LokiBot Android banking Trojan. The source code of the Xerxes malware was made public by its author around May 2019, which means that it is accessible to any threat actor.
When it comes to the targets of the credential-stealing overlays, the majority of the most targeted apps are related to banks operating in Europe, followed by Australia, the United States of America and Canada. But financial apps are not the only ones included in the list; shopping, communication and business apps seem to have a certain interest for the actors. Among others, we found some applications related to German online car selling services, Polish online shopping sites and well-known email services. The following chart shows the ratio of targeted apps per app category.
The second half of 2020 will come with its surprises, after Alien, Eventbot and BlackRock we can expect that financially motivated threat actors will build new banking Trojans and continue improving the existing ones. With the changes that we expect to be made to mobile banking Trojans, the line between banking malware and spyware becomes thinner, banking malware will pose a threat for more organizations and their infrastructure, an organic change that we observed on windows banking malware years ago.
According to the 2021 State of Mobile Finance App Security report, 77% of mobile banking apps have at least one security vulnerability that could lead to your personal data being leaked [*].
SIM swaps occur when fraudsters impersonate you (or pay a mobile carrier employee) and then transfer your account to their device. Once they have your phone number, they can receive your texts, calls, and other data. This is usually all it takes for scammers to reset your banking app password and bypass 2FA.
Look for two-factor authentication in your financial apps. Although some mobile phone users are using face recognition or eye scans, more apps are likely to require this in the future. Biometrics is one example of a two-factor authentication method. Two-factor authentication is a second layer of security, asking for a second method to verify who you are. Many banks use a password and a PIN, or a fingerprint and a password, are two examples.
Once the Anubis banking Trojan is dropped by a malware downloader on a victim's compromised device, it starts collecting banking info either with the help of an inbuilt keylogger module or by taking screenshots when the user inserts credentials into apps, unlike other banking Trojans known to use overlay screens for the same task.
According to some reports, the infected app found by Stefanko is a copy of another Android application, while as detailed by mobile security researcher Nikolaos Chrysaidos, the Anubis banking Trojan is also currently being pushed using multiple other apps still available in the Play Store.
As recently discovered by Trend Micro's researchers in January, Anubis Trojan was used in a large scale malware campaign targeting 377 bank applications from 93 countries all over the globe, with banks like Santander, RBS, Natwest, and Citibank, as well as non-banking apps such as Amazon, eBay, and PayPal being in their list of targets.
Anubis loops through installed applications and compares them against hardcoded packages names (mostly banking apps). Once it determines that one of these apps is being used, it can carry out an overlay attack. 2ff7e9595c
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