In the keynote session of the second day at the AusCERT conference on the Gold Coast, Klein said the financial and mobile malware began to increase during 2006, and has only become more prevalent in recent years.

"The financial malware for desktop started flourishing mid last decade around 2004 to 2005; we started seeing some earnest attempts at malware," he said.

"We started seeing third generation malware as early as 2006 but market domination occurred around 2008."

Klein identified a number of tricks used by those committing attacks on mobile devices, with botnets cited as one element behind attacks.