Governments and bank accounts, favorite targets of cyberattacks in Latin America

Governments and people’s bank accounts are among the favorite targets of cyber attacks in Latin America, a region where the use of pirated software is one of the major security risks for users, experts said Tuesday at a Latin American Conference on cybersecurity.

“Regarding piracy, people don’t want original software and this is a problem in Latin America”said Fabio Assolini, head of the Latin America Research team at cybersecurity firm Kaspersky.

Kaspersky data indicates that in the last 12 months it managed to block 1.1 billion malware attacks, 1.1 million ransomware attacks and 216 million phishing attacks in Latin America.

Governments have been the favorite target for malware attacks with 16% of the total in Latin America, followed by the agricultural sector, wholesalers and retailers, the manufacturing sector, education and health, among others.

Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Peru are the countries in the region that suffered the highest number of attacks of this type in the last year.

Regarding ransomware, which is a file hijacking virus, there was a decrease in 27% in attacks in recent months in the region.

“This is because companies are preparing better and groups are more selective, they choose their targets better because they don’t want to waste time attacking companies or entities without money to pay ransoms,” Assolini commented.

Brazil is the main target in the region in this matter and the fourth in the world.

He 40% of attacks in the region are from the ransomware known as “wanna cry” which dates from 2017, but which continues to strongly affect Latin American countries because there are many computers without the respective security patches.

Phishing, used to trick people into sharing passwords and sensitive information, is another major cybersecurity alert in the region. In the last year, Kaspersky detected an increase in 617% in attacks to reach 286 million.

“This is an attack that does not require much technical knowledge, it requires little investment to run a phishing campaign. Latin America is a region where there are many phishing attacks”, Assolini commented.

The banking sector was the main target with a 28% of attacks, which increases as 42.8% if it is generalized to the financial sector.

“Without a pandemic there are more people buying online, using online banking and the popularization of artificial intelligence tools has been added”which can also be a gateway for cybercrime, the expert said.

The experts gathered at the forum agreed that cybersecurity must be seen as an investment and a necessity, and not only as an expense for companies, people and governments.

Source: EFE