During Kaspersky’s annual Security Summit, a number of interesting facts and figures came to light regarding malware infection and virus detection in South Africa.
It was demonstrated that an alarming amount of computers are still being infected by malicious programs and most users do not make use of proper online security:
* In the period from January to June 2012, Kaspersky Lab products detected 1 378 615 Internet-borne malware incidents on the computers of KSN participants in South Africa.
* 27.7% of users from South Africa were attacked by web-borne threats during this period. This places South Africa in the 111th place worldwide when it comes to the dangers associated with surfing the web.
* In the period from January to June 2012, Kaspersky Lab products detected 2 908 487 local malware incidents on the computers of KSN participants in South Africa. Overall, 37.4% of users from South Africa were attacked by local threats during this period. This puts South Africa in the 95th place worldwide.
* The share of malicious incidents caused by malware hosted in South Africa was less than 0.1% – or 65,036 incidents in the period January-May 2012. This puts South Africa in 63rd place worldwide.
* The Top 10 countries in which users were most frequently subjected to online attacks:
1. Russian Federation (59.0%)
2. Tajikistan (56.3%)
3. Azerbaijan (55.9%)
4. Armenia (55.5%)
5. Kazakhstan (54.2%)
6. Belarus (51.5%)
7. Sudan (51.1%)
8. Bangladesh (50.3%)
9. India (48.6%)
10. Sri Lanka (48.3%)
* The type of data that cybercriminals try to steal in South Africa is: Banking (57%), payment systems (12%), email (11%), games (5%) and Social Networks details (4%).
* In South Africa, more than two thirds of targeted malicious programs are in the money-stealing business.
* The top three most vulnerable programs for Windows PCs are Adobe Acrobat Reader (42%), Oracle Java (27%) and Adobe Flash (2%).
* 125 000 new malicious programs appear every day, while 350 000 exploits a day are blocked by Kaspersky software.
* The two main methods used to penetrate a system are drive-by attacks and social engineering. The success of a drive-by attack depends on how vulnerable a browser and its plugins are.
* Users in developing countries are less aware of the dangers of the Internet and as a result do not pay enough attention to securing their computers.
Charlie Fripp – Consumer Tech editor
