Spam email traffic chokes Asia-Pacific digital highway

PHUKET, Thailand—One in four spam emails are being sent to devices in the Asia-Pacific, including the Philippines, amid the region’s high adoption for online transactions, according to a study by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky.

Noushin Shabab, senior security researcher at Kaspersky’s global research and analysis team, said in a press event on Thursday that about 24 percent of global malicious spam mails ended up in the region from January to mid-August this year.

Shabab said Asia-Pacific was among the most targeted given that its population has become more digital-savvy, using digital platforms to accomplish tasks like shopping and banking, in recent years.

267 billion spam emails

As a result, they have become “more susceptible to [receiving and opening] malicious emails,” she said.

Shabab noted over 267 billion spam emails were being sent and received daily, adding that the percentage of these malicious emails to the total number of emails was estimated to reach 84 percent.

The Kaspersky official warned these emails contained phishing tricks, luring unsuspecting victims into giving their sensitive information like passwords, credit card numbers and bank account details.

Of the number of attacks, only about 2 percent were accounted in the Philippines, about the same level observed in China and Singapore. About 61.1 percent of the malicious spams, meanwhile, were detected in Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia and Taiwan.

But “it definitely doesn’t mean that you are more protected just because the numbers of detections are lower,” Shabab told the Inquirer on the sidelines of the event.

She said all it would take was one email to penetrate a network, pertaining to advanced persistent threats.

“They (hackers) can start collecting information, moving from one system to another system and get the whole organization under control,” she said.