71% of Banking Malware Targets Corporate Users in Ethiopia

The collected data also shows that Ethiopia has the largest share of corporate users among those who are targeted by banking malware in African regions – it reached 71% in 2019, which means that almost two thirds of banking malware attacks in the country were aimed at the corporate sector.

In 2019, 773,943 users of Kaspersky solutions globally were attacked by banking Trojans. Of those users, a third ( 35.1%) were in the corporate sector says a press release from Kaspersky distributed.

“African countries were affected too: almost every hundredth user (varying from 0,9 to 1%) in South Africa, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Kenya was attacked by banking Trojans at least once during the past year, yet the share of affected corporate users varied greatly in these countries. This is among the findings from Kaspersky’s analysis of the financial threat landscape”,the report continues.

Banking Trojans or ‘bankers’ are one of the most widespread tools for cybercriminals as they focus on stealing money. Bankers usually search for users’ credentials for e-payment and online banking systems, hijacking one-time passwords, and then passing that data to the attackers.

“A third of these attacks in 2019 targeted corporate users, an increase from the figure (24%-25%) that has remained fairly consistent for the previous three years. According to experts, the rationale of this is clear: attacks on the B2B sector could not only provide access to banking or payment system accounts, but, through employee exposure, could also compromise a company’s financial resources.”

According to the press release Ethiopia’s Corporate Sector received almost two third of Banking Malware Attacks, which is the highest in the continent.

“The collected data also shows that Ethiopia has the largest share of corporate users among those who are targeted by banking malware in African regions – it reached 71% in 2019, which means that almost two thirds of banking malware attacks in the country were aimed at the corporate sector. “

It is followed by South Africa, where this figure is significantly smaller and can be compared to the global number, reaching 30%. Kenya and Nigeria, however, saw this parameter being lower than average, with approximately a fifth (22,5%) of banking malware attacks in Kenya targeting corporate devices, compared to 13% in Nigeria.

“While the overall number of attacks with bankers decreased in 2019, the growing interest for corporate users’ credentials indicates we are not yet seeing respite from financial threats. We therefore ask everyone to stay cautious when conducting financial operations online from PCs. While we are in the current peak of remote working during the Coronavirus pandemic, it is especially important to not underestimate criminals’ desire for stealing money,” said Oleg Kupreev, security expert at Kaspersky.

We have previously reported that, according to global cyber threat analysis, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt were the top three countries affected by widespread network attacks. More than any country in Africa, the attack to Ethiopia computer network infrastructures was the highest. Next to Iran and Pakistan, Ethiopia was the third most attacked country globally.