Kazakhstan -Amin Hasbini, Head of the Research and Analysis Team for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa at Kaspersky, has said that the company discovers about 400,000 new malicious files every day.
Hasbini shared some Kaspersky statistics on the most common phishing attacks in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa. The statistics showed an increase of 49% in phishing attacks in Egypt during the first quarter of this year compared to the same period last year.
The phishing attacks increased in the UAE (33%), Qatar (88%), Oman (28%), Kuwait (27%) and Bahrain (20%).
On the other hand, phishing attacks in Saudi Arabia recorded a slight decrease of 1% in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022.
This came during the eighth annual cybersecurity forum for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa (Cyber Security Weekend – META 2023), organized by Kaspersky in the Kazakh city of Almaty.
During the events attended by Daily News Egypt, the company’s experts discussed the biggest cyber threats that specifically target governments, commercial and industrial companies, in addition to predicting the trends that will affect the cyber security landscape in the future.
The impact of artificial intelligence and corporate data penetration on the dark web was also addressed at this conference, the risks posed by deepfakes, and critical industry threats.
On the other hand, the company’s statistics showed an increase in phishing attacks in South Africa (7%), Nigeria (53%) and Kenya (87%) in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the first quarter of 2022.
Turkey recorded an increase of (53%) in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the first quarter of 2022.
According to data released by Kaspersky, the number of organizations that were exposed to ransomware decreased mainly in the first quarter of 2023 in the Middle East and North Africa region compared to the same period in 2022. The decrease was observed in the Middle East, where the number of detections of corporate ransomware decreased by 61 %. During the same period, ransomware attacks also decreased in Turkey, with a decrease of 59%, as well as in Africa, which also witnessed a decrease of 65%.
Growth in cyber attacks on the banking sector in Egypt by 186%.
New malware contributed to an increase in banking attacks using malicious Trojans in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the first quarter of 2022, and the highest increase was in Turkey with a rate of (238%).
In general, the Middle East region also witnessed an increase in Trojan attacks targeting banking services in the first quarter of 2023, reaching in Kuwait (218%), Egypt (186%), Saudi Arabia (168%), and the Sultanate of Oman (115%), Qatar (99%), the UAE (67%), and Bahrain (33%). Nigeria also recorded an increase (268%) and Kenya (129%).
