Computer security firm Kaspersky has announced that out of more than 206K mobile malware attacks it blocked for the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa (META) region in just 6-months measured, between January to June 2021, over 30 000 of these attacks combined originated from Nigeria (14 071), Kenya (10 697), and South Africa (5 499).
Nigeria is still behind Eqypt where the company says it blocked 19466 mobile malware attacks. The numbers indicate how prevalent mobile threats have become in the north African state.
While Kenya and South Africa do not feature prominently, mobile malware threats are still an issue, along with the transition to more targeted-based attacks.
Kaspersky adds that the top three prevalent malware behaviours seen in Kenya and Nigeria are Trojans, Trojan-Downloaders; and Trojan-Droppers (save a range of files containing malicious programs to the victim’s drive).
In South Africa, these are Trojans (malware disguised as legitimate software which attackers can use to try and gain access to user systems), Trojan-Proxy (allows an attacker to use the infected device as a proxy to connect to the Internet.); and Trojan-Downloaders (download and install new versions of malicious programs, including Trojans and Adware on victim computers).
“Mobile malware remains a significant threat for corporate and personal users across Africa. These attacks are usually very diverse with hackers leveraging a range of methodologies and technologies to compromise victims’ devices. Trojan-Downloaders and Trojan-Droppers are especially dangerous given their potential to contain significantly damaging payloads,” says Bethwel Opil, Enterprise Sales Manager at Kaspersky in Africa.
You can find more details from a publication shared by Kaspersky here.
