Almost half of Nigerian users encountered malware in local networks

According to a Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) study, in the third quarter of 2015 overall 45.3% of respondents in Nigeria encountered malware that spread in local networks, via USBs and storage disks, while 13.8% faced cyber-threats from the internet.

This puts the country on the 64th and 128th place worldwide by the percentage of users who encountered the two types of malware. Kaspersky Lab solutions detected and repelled a total of 235.4 million malicious attacks from online resources located all over the world. Kaspersky Lab’s web antivirus detected 38.2 million unique malicious objects.

There were 5.68 million registered notifications about attempted malware infections that aim to steal money via online access to bank accounts. 323,374 new malicious mobile programs were detected by Kaspersky Lab mobile security products in Q3. This is a 10.8% increase since Q2 2015.

There were more than 1.5 million malicious packages installed on mobiles during the quarter, 1.5 times more than in the previous quarter. Displaying adverts to users has remained the main method of making money from mobile threats. Kaspersky Lab observed a growing number of programs that used advertising in this way, and they often root the device of a victim, making it very difficult to combat them. In Q3 2015, these Trojans accounted for more than half the most popular mobile malware.

In Q3 2015, Kaspersky Lab’s solutions blocked almost 626,000 attempts to launch malware capable of stealing money via access to users’ online banking. This number is 17.2% lower than in the second quarter of the year, although it is a 5.7% increase since Q3 2014. During the quarter, there were 5.68 million notifications about attempted malware infections to steal money from users via online access to bank accounts.

In Q3 2015, countries with the largest number of users attacked by banking Trojans were Austria (5% of all Kaspersky Lab users in this country encountered this threat), Singapore (4.2%) and Turkey (3%). Most of the countries in the top 10 have significant numbers of online banking users, attracting cybercriminals.