Phishing attacks in SEA soar by a million compared to 2021

Phishing attacks in Southeast Asia have grown exponentially during the first half of the year. According to Kaspersky, it blocked 12,127,692 malicious links in the region from January to June 2022, a million more than the total number last year - 11,260,643.

More than half of the H1 2022 detections were targeting Kaspersky users in Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Out of the six Southeast Asian countries, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam recorded more phishing emails during the first six months of this year compared to their total number of incidents in 2021. Indonesia and Singapore, on the other hand, witnessed a dip.

Phishing, a type of social engineering attack, remains one of the key methods used by attackers to compromise their targets – both individuals and organisations. It works as it is done on a large scale where cybercriminals send massive waves of emails purporting to be legitimate companies or personalities to promote fake pages or infect users with malicious attachments.

The end goal of a phishing attack is to steal credentials – particularly financial and login information – to steal money or worst to compromise an entire organisation.

According to Kaspersky's GM for Southeast Asia, Yeo Siang Tiong, the first half of the year is eventful in good and bad ways.

"On a personal level, we went through the seismic shift of trying to regain our lives post-pandemic, forcing companies and organisations to welcome remote and hybrid work. The travel sector, including airlines, airports, travel agencies, and more, has also been overwhelmed by the influx of tourists wanting to travel with borders now open," Yeo said.

He added that behind these shifts are networks and systems that needed to be updated and secured hastily. On the other hand, cybercriminals are all ears and with their ability to tweak their messages and infuse them with believable urgency. As a result, Yeo said the company has seen real, unfortunate incidents of victims losing money because of phishing attacks.

Aside from individual’s loss of money, Kaspersky also highlighted that most of the Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups in the Asia Pacific including Southeast Asia use targeted phishing to enter into a highly-defended network.

According to Kaspersky, an APT uses continuous, clandestine, and sophisticated hacking techniques to gain access to a system and remain inside for a prolonged period of time, with potentially destructive consequences.

Due to the level of effort needed to carry out such an attack, APTs are usually leveled at high-value targets, such as nation states and large corporations, with the ultimate goal of stealing information over a long period of time, rather than simply "dipping in" and leaving quickly, as many black hat hackers do during lower level cyber assaults.

Yeo said that 75% of executives in the region are aware and even anticipate an APT attack against their organisations. Hence, it is crucial to have backup security plans, such as incident response capabilities, to prevent such attacks.

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