Malaysia Among Top 5 In APAC With Most Users Affected By Online Threats In 2024 - Kaspersky

From Danni Haizal Danial Donald

NEGOMBO (Sri Lanka), Aug 5 (Bernama) -- Malaysia is among the top five countries in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region with the most users affected by online threats, according to global cybersecurity company Kaspersky.

It said that from January to July 2024, more than a quarter of a billion online threats were detected in the APAC region.

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Kaspersky Global Research and Analysis Team director Igor Kuznetsov said online threats refer to users encountering a form of online threat through online downloads from the Internet and phishing.

He said the Philippines topped the list with 39.4 per cent of users affected, while Malaysia ranks fourth with 31.4 per cent.

“This is followed by Nepal (36.8 per cent), Sri Lanka (34.9) per cent, Malaysia (31.4 per cent) and New Zealand (30.9 per cent),” he said in a presentation at Kaspersky APAC Cybersecurity Weekend 2024, here today.

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Kuznetsov said that Kaspersky also detected more than 340 million local threats, which refers to detection by downloading files from external media such as pen drives on computers or mobile devices. 

“Regarding users affected by local threats detected on mobile devices, Myanmar tops the list and ranks eight globally with 49.8 per cent, followed by Vietnam (46.1 per cent), China (43.8 per cent), Nepal (43.8 per cent) and Laos (40.4 per cent),” he said.

Kuznetsov added that more than two million password stealers, over one million ransomware attacks, and more than 7.5 million general backdoors were among the threats detected.

“From the online threats, we prevented more than 60 million RDP (remote desktop protocol) attacks,” he added.

Meanwhile, Kaspersky reported that about 22 per cent of users in APAC encountered mobile threats, with more than 16 per cent being mobile password stealers.

“Out of the 16 per cent, about 15 per cent were bank trojans, which means they (stealers) could have stolen money from the users.

“Of all these detections for this year, most came from Taiwan, with 51.67 per cent, followed by China (17.04 per cent) and India (9.88 per cent),” he said.

-- BERNAMA