Cyber-Criminals Launch Ransomware Attacks on African Countries

One of the countries that during November were affected with an increase of 10 percent in ransomware assaults is South Africa. Consequently, this country climbed up from rank 58 during October to rank 31 during November in Check Point's series of 117 nations facing the maximum attacks. The two commonly used ransomware strains were Cryptowall and Locky. Of the two, Locky proliferates chiefly through spam mails having one downloader camouflaging one attached Zip/Word file that subsequently pulls down and plants the malicious program which encrypts the data on end-user's system. Itnewsafrica.com posted this, December 21, 2016.

Among the other African countries in the series, Botswana faced the maximum assaults, while Malawi followed on No.2, Namibia on No.4, Uganda on No.9, and the Democratic Republic of Congo on No.10.

Check Point prepared a Global Threat Index for November in which it ranked malware families according to their maximum prevalence. These malware, particularly Cryptowall and Locky ransomware strains that targeted organization networks showed a ten percent rise in total attacks. Check Point also noted that active malware and total number of assaults, both stayed near the maximum during the month, with the assaults generally occurring against business networks.

The trend outlines that ransomware threat is increasingly weakening corporate networks whereby numerous organizations are just making the ransom payments in attempts to retrieve their files. Simultaneously, cyber-criminals find employing their malware a lucrative and attractive means for assault.

According to Check Point Software Technologies' Area Manager Rick Rogers for East & West Africa, ransomware assaults continue to increase in volume just because they're easy to execute and generate considerable income for the cyber-criminals. Companies work hard for counteracting these malware attacks; plenty just do not have appropriate security safeguards, while also lack educated staff who would know the ways for recognizing potential ransomware assaults within inbound e-mails.

Organizations should deploy sophisticated threat prevention solutions at endpoints, computer-networks, and mobile gadgets for halting malware even before they can inject their payload. Check Point offers its SandBlast Zero-Day Protection, Threat Extraction, and Mobile Threat Prevention software for enabling the organizations to adequately secure themselves vis-à-vis the most recent malware, adds Rogers.

» SPAMfighter News - 12/28/2016