Cybersecurity During the Pandemic, Morocco in Top 5 Most Afflicted

Rabat – As mobile technology and the internet become increasingly inseparable from our daily lives, cybersecurity is becoming an ever-increasing global concern, Kaspersky notes in its annual report.

Morocco and Algeria are both in the top five countries which are most affected by the share of users attacked through mobile malware.

Iran leads the way as the most affected country, where Kaspersky detected that 67.78% of mobile users in the country were attacked by mobile malware. Algeria follows in second place, with a reported 31.29% of mobile users affected, and Bangladesh comes third, where 26.18% of mobile users were attacked. Morocco came in fourth place, with 22.67%, and Nigeria followed in a close fifth, where 22% of mobile users were afflicted.

According to the study, in 2020 Kaspersky products detected 5.7 million malicious installation packages, 156,710 new mobile banking Trojans, and 20,708 new mobile ransomware Trojans.

Despite the fact that earlier in the year Morocco ranked among the top ten countries for the highest volume of malware attacks, according to another study by Kaspersky, the company noted that the majority of people in Morocco were indifferent about cybersecurity at the time.

Read also: Malicious Emails Represent Most Frequent Digital Threat in Morocco

Only 8% of people questioned reported that they use any kind of antivirus software. 18% indicated that they do not update their mobile phones, and at least three out of four internet users have one password across different applications and devices.

Twelve of twenty-two types of mobile threats showed an increase in the number of detected installation packages in 2020 when compared to 2019. The most significant growth was demonstrated by adware, rising from 21.81% to 57.26% of all mobile threats.

Overall, Kaspersky saw a decrease in the number of attacks during the first half of the year, “which can be attributed to the confusion of the first months of the pandemic,” since “the attackers had other things to worry about.” Nonetheless, the second half of the year saw a sharp rise in cybersecurity threats, particularly “an increase in attacks involving mobile bankers,” concludes the study.