KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 6): Malaysia has climbed from 36th to 17th country with the most number of detected mobile ransomware Trojans in the first nine months of 2019, according to Kaspersky.
In a statement today, the cybersecurity company said the installation packages for this type of threat blocked by Kaspersky revealed a 58% increase as compared to 2018.
The firm said that ransomware is found not only on desktops, but also on mobile devices — and it is also on the rise there.
It said the most widespread type of desktop ransomware is the cryptolocker, a malware that encrypts data and offers to restore it if users pay ransom.
Kaspersky Southeast Asia general manager Yeo Siang Tiong said more Malaysians are moving towards online banking now and adoption rate is expected to increase tremendously in 2020, "more so with the Budget 2020 where Malaysians will receive RM30 digital cash as a form for the government to push the e-wallet adoption in the country".
"With this, the mobile users in the country should start paying attention to securing their smartphones, beyond the physical protection, but the virtual world too," said Yeo.
Kaspersky said International Data Corporation (IDC) shared that 10% of Malaysian replaced their smartphones within a year, while 35% said they would keep their smartphones for three years before upgrading.
It said IDC Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker listed both the top two brands of smartphones shipped worldwide were Android, followed by iOS on the third.
The firm said Forrester Research also published that Android phones made up 74% of the market.
Kaspersky said Android has an open source system, and the code is called 'Android Open Source Project', allowing the developers of Android apps to take the source code and create their own custom OS with it.
It said this makes Android devices easier to 'root', involving the removal of the manufacturer's software restrictions and installing unauthorized apps, which translate to greater chance of vulnerabilities in the code on the phone.
Yeo said that for hackers, it makes sense to write hacking code for a system that is not only easier to hack, but is also more widely used.
"There is a much wider base of user information to steal so most of mobile malware aimed at Android devices, due to their popularity. It is like the 'Spray and Pray' method.
"Besides keeping the Android devices up to date with the manufacturers [which] seldom push out the latest OS to the users, users should begin to start having security solution on their Android devices," said Yeo.