CYBER SECURITY: Detected Malware infections top out at over 400 million in 30 days - Analysis

CYBER SECURITY: Detected Malware infections top out at over 400 million in 30 days - Analysis
Posted by NewsTeam - GEOPoliticalMatters.com
City of London Newsroom

A report by Atlas VPN has revealed that there have been nearly 404 million malware infections globally in the last 30 days. [Benchmark date: April 5th 2020] That equates to a massive 10 million+ cases per day, with more than 64% of the malicious attacks targeting educational institutions.

In April, the number of global infections worldwide fluctuated between 10 million to nearly 16 million daily cases. On the first day of the month, there have been around 12 million infections registered worldwide, with the instances falling to the lowest point on April 5th with the Kaspersky Cyberthreats map detecting about 10 million infections that day.

By April 16th, the number of local infections reached its peak, hitting nearly 16 million cases worldwide. Since then, it has started decreasing, dropping to 11 million infections on April 19th. The following week saw the number fluctuating from 11.7 million to 15.1 million infections per day.

Central Asia experienced the largest number of local attacks. The statistics show the percentage of malware-infected devices in a particular area that had deployed Kaspersky antivirus software. It is worth noting that the actual numbers could be bigger since the rest of the devices may be using different antivirus software or of course none at all.

During the reported period, at least 32.13% of devices in Tajikistan were exposed to malware, closely followed by Uzbekistan, with 31.44%. In China, Kaspersky detected malware in 26.93% of devices. In both Venezuela and Brazil, about 12% of devices experienced malware infections, followed by at least 11% of infected devices in Mexico.

Belarus and Russia were the most affected countries in the European region. According to Kaspersky, 22.07% of devices in Belarus that use their antivirus software were exposed to malware, while the number reached 21.82% in Russia.

Surprisingly, the education sector were exposed to the largest number of malware attacks with over 4.2 million infections, accounting for a huge 64.77% of the 6.5 million attacked devices. It is widely assumed in Cybercrime circles that lecturers and students aren't particularly Cybersecurity aware and don't have sophisticated systems deployed. The number of malware attacks is expected to rise during the exam period, so operators in the field really need to engage Cyber specialists and start running advanced malware detection systems, particularly if they are planning to hold exams remotely with current global restrictions in place.

The next sector hardest hit is "business and professional services", with over 623,000 episodes accounting for 9% of all recorded cases. Similarly, with nearly 540,000 cases, retail and consumer goods faced 8% of all infections.

Meanwhile, financial and insurance services experience 5% of malware infections globally. Microsoft detected almost 330,000 cases with the already stretched healthcare sector with nearly 270,000 infections detected. The aerospace and car industry faced close on 200,000 malicious attacks and mining, chemicals, oil & gas experiencing 194,000 attacks.

Finally, there have been 162,000 malware attacks in the transportation and hospitality field, which makes about 2.5% of attacked devices.