Kaspersky: Malaysia ranked 10th globally for targeted malicious mailings in 2022

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Global cybersecurity and digital privacy company, Kaspersky has revealed that Malaysia ranked 10th in the top 20 countries targeted by malicious mailings last year. In fact, in 2022, our country saw an increase of 18 million malicious email attachments from previous years. 

In a press release, Kaspersky shared that last year, the most triggers in Malaysia were recorded in March, May and June. Furthermore, the number almost reached 3 per cent in 2022 compared to the 2.62 per cent recorded in 2021. 

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The company further elaborated that the malicious mailing that Malaysian users received were disguised as business correspondence, whereby cybercriminals will try to convince them that the content is business-related information, like commercial offers or invoice or bank transfer slips. 

In most cases, when a malicious document is opened, the trojan is loaded. Sometimes, it is difficult to recognise what is genuine and what is a phishing attempt. 

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Moreover, based on the data gathered by Kaspersky, the majority of phishing pages were hosted in the .com domain zone and generally associated with entertainment content, which is perhaps what attracted victims to it. According to Chris Connell, Managing Director for Asia Pacific at Kaspersky, scams promising compensation and payouts from government agencies, large corporations, and banks are likely to remain popular among cybercriminals in 2023. 

Besides that, Cornell iterated that data from Kaspersky Secure Network (KSN) showed that web threats in Malaysia in the past 5 years are actually on a downward trend. KSN reported that Malaysia experienced the highest web threats in 2021, at 61.3 million, and then came down to 37.1 million last year. 

However, Cornell warned against complacency as cybercriminals are becoming more creative to lure victims hence protection on devices is essential. The Communications and Digital Ministry (KKD) has called for the need for state governments and government agencies on cybersecurity.

Kaspersky shared these precautions to take in order to stay protected against malicious mailings:

  • Do not download and install applications from untrusted sources
  • Do not click on any links from unknown sources or suspicious online advertisements
  • Create strong and unique passwords, including a mix of lower-case and upper-case letters, numbers, and punctuation, as well as activate two-factor authentication
  • Always install updates. Some of them may contain critical security issue fixes
  • Ignore messages asking to disable security systems for office or cybersecurity software
  • Use a robust security solution appropriate to your system type and devices, such as Kaspersky Internet Security or Kaspersky Security Cloud. It will tell you which sites shouldn’t be open and protect you from malware

So, what do you guys think of the statement by Kaspersky? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below and stay tuned to TechNave for more tech news from Malaysia and beyond.