Africa
features significantly in the latest Global Threat Impact Index released for
May 2017, by Check Point Software Technologies Limited, of which out of the top
10
countries, five are African.
Zambia has
the highest risk profile, with Nigeria in second position. Uganda, Malawi and
South African are ranked 7th, 8th and 9th respectively. South Africa, in
particular, demonstrated a significant jump in ranking, having moved up from
22nd position since last month.
The Index
also revealed that more than one in four organisations globally was affected by
the Fireball or WannaCry attacks during May.Two of the top three malware
families that impacted networks globally were zero-day, previously unseen
attacks. Fireball impacted one in five organisations worldwide, with
second-placed RoughTed impacting 16 per cent and third-placed WannaCry
affecting nearly eight per cent of organisations globally. The two malware
variants, Fireball, and WannaCry, rapidly spread worldwide throughout the month
of May.
The most
prevalent malware highlight the wide range of attack vectors and targets
cyber-criminals are utilising, impacting all stages of the infection
chain.Fireball takes over target browsers and turns them into zombies, which it
can then use for a wide range of actions including dropping additional malware,
or stealing valuable credentials. By contrast, RoughTed is a large-scale
malvertising campaign, and WannaCry takes advantage of a Windows SMB exploit
called EternalBlue in order to propagate within and between networks. WannaCry
was particularly high profile, bringing down a myriad of networks worldwide.
In addition
to the top three, there were also other new variants of malware seen within the
top 10 of the index including Jaff (8th) another form of ransomware,
demonstrating how profitable this particular attack vector is proving for
malicious parties.
Area Manager
for East and West Africa at Check Point Software Technologies, Rick Rogers,
noted that to see so many brand-new malware families among the world’s most
prevalent cyber attacks this month underlines just how innovative
cybercriminals can be, and shows how dangerous it is for organisations to
become complacent.
According to
him, “Organisations need to remember that the financial impact from cyber-
attacks goes way beyond the initial incident. Restoring key services and
repairing reputational damage can be a very long and expensive process.
“As such,
organisations in every industry sector need a multi-layered approach to their
cybersecurity. Our SandBlast Zero-Day Protection and Mobile Threat Prevention,
for example, protect against the widest range of continually evolving attack
types, and also protect against zero-day malware variants.”
Reuters
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