Cyberattacks in the Philippines increased over the last three months, landing the country among the top 10 most attacked for the second quarter of 2018.
According to cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab, there were some 10.6 million web infections detected in the country during the period, causing the Philippines to climb to ninth most-attacked during the period, or up eight notches in just three months. In the first quarter, the company recorded 5.67 million infections.
Most of the web malware attacks were related to cryptomining, Kaspersky Lab noted. The activity refers to the use of software tools to take over devices, without the permission of the owner, and use the same for cryptocurrency mining.
“Majority of the web attacks, including web-miners and threats related to browser extensions, that also has significant share in the Philippines in Q2, are targeted mostly against home users,” Denis Parinov, malware expert at Kaspersky Lab, said in a statement.
Kaspersky Lab noted that 39.4 percent of the web-infection rate was detected from home users (those who use Kaspersky Internet Security) and 11.2 percent from business users (those who use Kaspersky Enterprise Security).
It added that more than half of the detected web threats were from malware-hosting sites based in the United States (51.32 percent), followed by the Netherlands (22.4 percent), France (5.71 percent), Portugal (3.04 percent) and Canada (2.78 percent).
“From 19.2 percent of users infected while surfing the web last year, there are now over 34.6 percent of Filipino netizens being targeted by
cybercriminals. The rapid rise of the number of web threats targeting the Philippines is undoubtedly concerning,” Siang Tiong Yeo, general manager at Kaspersky Lab Southeast Asia, said in the same statement.
The top five countries infected by web threats in the second quarter of 2018 were Algeria (44 percent), Belarus (39.6 percent), Republic of Moldova (37.4 percent), Albania (37.3 percent) and Armenia (37.1 percent).