By Adedapo Adesanya
Sixteen percent of mobile users in Nigeria experienced mobile malware attacks within the first quarter of the year, Kaspersky has stated.
In a report release by the cybersecurity giant, it was stated that Nigeria ranked fourth among the top 10 countries with the highest number of inhabitants which most frequently encountered adware apps attacks in the world. The only country on the African continent higher than Nigeria was Algeria.
Algeria had a higher percentage of 21.4 percent in second place, according to the report, which said Iran led the pack with 39.6 percent.
The report noted that globally, 50 percent of the mobile malware threats detected were adware apps, whose threats increased by 19 percent compared to Q1 2019.
Other malware detected include HiddenAd and Ewind which together form 40 percent of detected adware threats in the world. There was also the FakeAdBlocker family which had a 12 percent occurrence rate.
Out of the installation packages that were available for use in the first quarter, 1,152,662 were found to be malicious. 42,115 of the malicious packages were mobile banking trojans and 4,339 were mobile ransomware packages.
The report stated that the COVID-19 pandemic was largely responsible for attacks during Q1 2020, and malware creators took advantage of the panic and fear associated with the pandemic to get access to people’s details. One of the popular malwares employed by hackers is the Coronavirus Finder.
The malware is a modified version of the Ginp banking trojan and claims to be able to detect nearby people who have been infected with the COVID-19. The malware is disguised as an app and sold for €0.75 (N358).
After it has been installed, the trojan tries to gain access to bank card details and remains on the mobile phone as a means for cybercriminals to intercept text messages such as two-factor authentification codes without the owner being aware.
In total, the number of malware detected in Q1 2020 is significantly higher than the 905,174 that was detected in Q1 2019. There has been a steady increase in the number of banking trojans as well.
