PH ranked 9th in cyberthreat risks
Is the Philippines becoming more vulnerable to cyber threats?
The country has emerged as the 9th most attacked country worldwide in terms of cyber threat risks in the second quarter of 2018, up from its 44th place in the same period in 2017, a cybersecurity firm said last week.
Kasperky Lab said in a statement the country’s web malware infections online have ballooned by 242 percent to 10.6 million in the second quarter compared to the recorded 3.1 million a year earlier.
The Moscow-based cybersecurity firm noted 39.4 percent of internet threats were detected from home users, while 11.2 percent were from business users.
“Most of the web malware we have detected in the Philippines during the second quarter of 2018 were related to cryptomining. Majority of the web-attacks, including web-miners and threats related to browser extensions, that also has significant share in the Philippines in [second quarter], are targeted mostly against home users,” said Denis Parinov, malware expert at Kaspersky Lab.
Perpetrators secretly enter a user’s device through the downloaded software to mine cryptocurrency, such as bitcoins, the firm said.
Filipino netizens being targeted by cybercriminals have also surged from 19.2 percent to 34.6 percent, noted Siang Tiong Yeo, general manager at Kaspersky Lab Southeast Asia.
“The rapid rise of the number of web threats targeting the Philippines is undoubtedly concerning,” he added.
Yeo stressed that while the government has been boosting the Philippines’ cyberspace, this would be “futile if Filipino internet users are unconcerned and unaware of securing themselves online.”
Kaspersky has urged local netizens to continuously update their devices’ operating system and application; ensure that they have anti-virus software; and be vigilant about opening unsolicited email attachments or visiting unknown sites.
The firm said more than half of the detected web threats were from malware-hosting sites based in the US (51.32 percent), followed by the Netherlands (22.40 percent), France (5.71 percent), Portugal (3.04 percent), and Canada (2.78 percent).
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