Ranking of cyberattacked countries bared

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PH places 4th in most cyber threatened countries

IN the two years the country has been contained and oftentimes locked down, cybercriminals around the world have preyed on Filipinos who have been mostly stuck at home surfing, working, banking, or studying.

This situation heightened exposure of Filipinos to dangers of the Internet and the country takes 4th places, climbing 2 notches Kaspersky’s 2021 global ranking of countries most targeted by web threats. From January to December 2021, the cybersecurity firm country detected and foiled more than 50 million web threat attempts. This according to statistics released by Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) from the cybersecurity company’s Cloud-based threat intelligence service, and based on the products used by Filipinos.

From 2017 to 2021, in the malware-detection history of KSN, the cyberthreats detected in the Philippines rocketed by 433 percent– from 9,487,775 in 2017 compared to 50,544,988 in 2021.

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“Because of the internet, carrying on with work and school during the pandemic has been significantly possible. The internet has also provided people a temporary escape from real life during lockdowns. This is true not just for Filipinos but for everyone around the world,” Yeo Siang Tiong, General Manager for Southeast Asia at Kaspersky said in a virtual press conference recently.

Web attacks proliferate on dating apps

Most web threats are attacks via browsers. Cybercriminals normally use drive-by downloads and social engineering to try to spread malware to devices of Internet users.

An example of a social engineering method that takes advantage of dating apps like Tinder. In this scheme emails mimicking a dating website profile are sent out. The emails have a link to a phishing page and asks people to complete a form with their personal preferences in a future partner. The user is then asked to add their banking credentials. Needless to say, the victim ends up with data and money loss and does not get the chance to meet new people.

A drive-by download infection, which is used in most of the attacks, happens when visiting an infected website. In such attacks, cybercriminals use file-less malware, the most dangerous way of infecting a device because it’s such a complicated malware that is difficult to detect and counter. Fraudulent transactions robbed many Filipinos who in turn react in one of three ways.

First, 65 percent of Filipinos, change their passwords on their bank/digital wallet accounts and apps after an attack. Second, half (51 percent) of those surveyed victims of online scammers and fraudsters admitted that informing their family and friends of what happened was what they did before anything else. And finally about 43 percent shared that contacting their bank or financial service company to report the incident was their immediate course of action.

Finance apps and loss of money

In the same survey, 54 percent of Filipino respondents appear to be somewhat confident that electronic banking and e-wallet platforms are very secure that they use these services at least several times a week.

According to local survey participants, they choose digital payments to transfer money to family and friends, pay for utilities, and shop online, in that order.

“We can glean from this data that Filipinos draw strength from their family during a crisis particularly where there’s potential loss of money. This may explain why they make calls to their families and friends before anything else rather than swiftly report their circumstance to the proper authorities,” said Yeo concluded, as he added how prevention–the detection of a scam or fraud early on in the transaction is essential,” Yeo concludes.

He recommends that apart from using a strong password, enabling all security features of the device and apps, and keeping an eye on red flags, Yeo said practicing good cyber hygiene includes considering dependable software protection even before an unfortunate event takes place and not after encountering an incident.

Kaspersky Total Security is compatible with PC and Mac computers as well as iOS and Android devices. It retails for P1,390 for a one-year license for one device. KTS is currently available in all leading IT stores nationwide, including Lazada and Shopee.

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