printer friendly version

Africa under cyber-attack

Kaspersky has reported on 28 million malware attacks in 2020 and 102 million detections of potentially unwanted programs (pornware, adware etc.) it has accounted for by the beginning of August 2020. These numbers show that it’s not only the malware that attacks users but also the 'grey zone' programs that grow in popularity and disturb their experiences, while users might not even know it is there.

Potentially unwanted applications (PUAs) are programs that are usually not considered to be malicious by themselves. However, they are generally influencing user experience in a negative way. For instance, adware fills user device with ads; aggressive monetising software propagates unrequested paid offers; and downloaders may download even more applications on the device, sometimes malicious ones.

While calculating interim results of threat landscape activity in African countries, the researchers noticed that PUAs attack users almost four times more often than traditional malware. They also eventually reach more users: for instance, while in South Africa, the malware would attack 415 000 users in seven months of 2020, the figure for PUA would be 736 000.

Share this article:

Further reading: