Kenya among top 10 in global phone malware attacks

Kenya is among top 10 countries with the highest number of users attacked by mobile malware in the latest statistics by a cybersecurity company. FILE PHOTO | NMG 

By ANNIE NJANJA
More by this Author

Summary

• Kenya is among top 10 countries with the highest number of users attacked by... mobile malware in the latest statistics by a cybersecurity company.
• The latest malware report by tech firm Kaspersky Security Network dubbed IT Threat Evolution Quarter Two 2019 ranked Kenya as the tenth country at 15.38 percent share of users attacked by mobile malware.
• Kenya, however, dropped in ranking from position nine in Quarter One when its share of users attacked by malware stood at 16.27 percent.

Kenya is among top 10 countries with the highest number of users attacked by mobile malware in the latest statistics by a cybersecurity company.

The latest malware report by tech firm Kaspersky Security Network dubbed IT Threat Evolution Quarter Two 2019 ranked Kenya as the tenth country at 15.38 percent share of users attacked by mobile malware.

Kenya, however, dropped in ranking from position nine in Quarter One when its share of users attacked by malware stood at 16.27 percent.

Malware also known as malicious software is a file or program that is harmful to computer users and this includes a ransomware, Trojan and Adware.

Iran ranked first, at 28.31 percent with the largest number of users attacked by various malware that includes Trojan while Bangladesh came in second at 28.1 percent as users encountered malware with Adware being the most common threat.

Algeria was third at 24.77 percent where Adware was also the greatest threat to mobile users.

The findings of the report also support the latest Communication Authority of Kenya (CA) for April-June that shows a spike in malware attacks.

According to the CA, malware cases almost tripled in nine months to hit 21 million between April and June.

The National Kenya Computer Incident Response Team Coordination Centre (National KE-CIRT/CC) issued 1,586 malware threat advisories during the quarter, which is an increase by 300 cases to the affected critical infrastructure service providers.

There was a 15.3 percent increase in overall advisories (malware, botnet, web application attacks, system vulnerabilities and others) to hit 16,347.

“During the period April to June 2019, the National KE-CIRT/CC detected 26.6 million cyber threat events as compared to 11.3 million cyber threat events detected in the period January to March 2019.

“This increase in the number of cyber threat events detected is attributed to the global increase in malware including ransomware attacks during this period,” said the CA report.