• Since 17th October, the number of threats detected by Surfshark Antivirus in South Africa increased by 17 percent.
• The largest portion of detections globally is for software that can be exploited by cybercriminals.
• The festive season presents a massive opportunity for cybercriminals to attack users whose guard may be down.

Here’s hoping you spent the weekend shopping with threat protection in place and your wits about you.

This is because according to Surfshark, since 17th October, the number of online threats in South Africa increased by 17 percent. This data was gleaned via Surfshark’s Antivirus platform. The data was aggregated and anonymised by Surfshark’s automated systems.

The firm says that in the build-up to Black Friday, cyber threats around the world began climbing. Frankly, South Africa’s threat increase is minor compared to other countries.

According to Surfshark, the countries with the largest increase in threats week-over-week are:

• Romania – 4 349 percent
• Belgium – 440 percent
• Australia – 275 percent
• Lithuania – 95 percent
• Germany – 75 percent

South Africa is however the country attracting the largest number of threats on the African continent.

The most common threat detected by Surshark’s platform is riskware which accounts for 47.3 percent of all threats identified globally. Riskware is a rather broad term that we need to address here. This software is defined as perfectly legitimate software that can be exploited for nefarious purposes.

An example used by Kaspersky is a weather app. While not malicious in and of itself, should the app be exploited a cybercriminals could use that data to track a user’s location.

The latest threat intelligence from the AV Atlas portal reports increased detection of malware exploiting the Dialer feature in some applications.

Detections of so-called heuristic threats are on the rise. These threats are described as having similar characteristics to threats in the wild but are, as of the time of detection, unknown.

These could be false positives but there is also the possibility that threat actors are evolving their attacks faster than intelligence platforms can keep up.

Data from the Independent IT-Security Institute supports this, showcasing that year on year, the total number of malware and potentially unwanted applications increases. The organisation states that it registers some 450 000 new malicious programs every day.

With the festive shopping season approaching it’s important to be aware of the risks one faces online. Not only are there malicious programs that can be leveraged, but social engineering, phishing attacks and more can also be used against you to gain access to accounts or even the company you work for.

Make use of a reputable security solution and treat any deal that seems too good to be true as if it is.

[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]