APAC Accounts For A Quarter Of Global Malicious Emails In 2022
New research suggests that the APAC region receives 24 per cent of the global malicious spam mails being detected and blocked by Kaspersky solutions. This means one in four junk electronic messages were delivered to computers in APAC.
One of Kaspersky’s elite researchers, Noushin Shabab, probed into the spam threat landscape in Asia Pacific (APAC) this year to answer – what if emails do not get opened? Shabab, presenting in front of select media from the region during Kaspersky’s 8th APAC Cyber Security Weekend, revealed that the region receives 24 per cent of the global malicious spam mails being detected and blocked by Kaspersky solutions.
Malicious spam is not a technologically complex attack, but when done with sophisticated social engineering techniques, it poses a severe threat to individuals and enterprises alike.
According to Kaspersky, these junk mails are sent out in mass quantities by spammers and cybercriminals who are looking to do one or more of the following:
•Make money from the small percentage of recipients that actually respond to the message
•Run phishing scams – in order to obtain passwords, credit card numbers, bank account details, and more
•Spread malicious code onto recipients’ computers
In 2022, more than half (61.1 per cent) of the malicious spam detected in the region targeted Kaspersky users from Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia, and Taiwan.
Shabab cited three main factors which cause the bulk of spam emails targeting APAC – its population, the high adoption of e-services, and the pandemic lockdowns.
The APAC region has almost 60 per cent of the world’s population and this means that there are more potential victims for scammers here compared to other parts of the world.
“Since 2018, the number of malicious spam mails detected by our solutions has seen a gradual decline after its peak in 2019. This, however, does not equate to our mailboxes being cleaner and safer. Our constant monitoring of the current and new Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) operating in Asia Pacific showed that majority of these notorious threat actors use targeted phishing called spearphishing to crack into an organisation’s systems,” revealed Shabab, Senior Security Researcher for Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) at Kaspersky.
