mobile malware
Digital Payments: Survey Reveals 35% South Africans Faced Phishing Scams
Image sourced from isnews.stir.ac.uk According to the Kaspersky Digital Payment survey, 35% of respondents from South Africa faced phishing scams when using online banking or mobile wallet services. 43% have personally encountered fake websites, and 59% experienced scams (via texts or calls) using social engineering. When asked about awareness of threats against digital payment methods, the majority of respondents from South Africa report that they are aware of both financial phishing attacks (94%) and online scams (95%). 78% also stated that they are informed about banking malware on PCs and on mobile. This type of malicious software steals money from users’ bank accounts. However, 98% think that banks and payment companies should educate users more about the threats online. When it comes...
Mobile Malware Attacks Across Africa are on the Decline – Why It Isn’t a Good Thing
Image sourced from Sectigo. While analysing the threat landscape of African countries, Kaspersky experts saw a steady decline in attacks on mobile devices in the region, as cybercriminals consolidated their efforts to focus on more complicated, dangerous and profitable threats instead. These and other findings are featured in Kaspersky’s Mobile Threats in 2021 report. Overall, in 2021, South African users faced 38% less mobile malware attacks than in 2020, while other countries in the region have seen even more dramatic changes of their mobile threat landscape: Mozambique saw a 48% decrease, followed by Botswana (58%), Nigeria (59%), Ethiopia (69%) and Ghana (76%). The only countries where the share of attacks increased was Angola, where mobile malware actually grew by 12%. “Indeed, there ...
The Mobile Malware Scourge Hits SA, Kenya & Nigeria
Internet security provider Kaspersky has blocked more than 206,000 mobile malware attacks across the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa (META) region in just 6-months measured, between January to June 2021. Out of these attacks, a combined 30,000 originated from Nigeria (14,071), Kenya (10,697), and South Africa (5,499), respectively. Significantly, for the African countries monitored, Nigeria only trails Egypt (19,466) by the number of attacks blocked, pointing to how prevalent mobile threats have become in this highly connected country. In fact, Kaspersky’s latest research shows that when looking at the top ten countries by share of users attacked by mobile malware Nigeria places eighth (at 11.76%). Even though Kenya and South Africa might not feature as prominently, the mobile malware thre...
Here’s what can cause Airtime Theft in South Africa
Sourced from Forbes Nearly 1.7 million mobile subscribers are infected with mobile malware in South Africa alone, reports 2019 data by mobile security company, Secure-D. According to the company, malware is the main culprit responsible for airtime theft and mobile ad fraud evident in the country, with 18,000 instances found on South African users’ devices. How malware highjacks mobile devices Mobile malware can either be downloaded on the device by the user via an app or come pre-installed. Once activated on the device, mobile malware becomes part of a “botnet” (short for robot network) of infected devices. These botnets, networks of malware-infused devices, are being remote-controlled at scale by a “bot-herder”. In the case of mobile ad fraud, the malicious application visits websites, cl...
