Vietnam among top targets for phishing in Southeast Asia

Recent statistics gathered by Kaspersky showed Southeast Asia remains a target of cybercriminals attempting to infect networks and devices through the simplest yet most effective trick called phishing. The global cybersecurity company has detected a total of 14 million phishing attempts against internet users in the region for the first six months of 2019.

It reveals that there were over 11 million combined attempts detected from these three countries. Moreover, Thailand logged nearly 1.5 million attempts while the Philippines had over one million incidents. Singapore posted only 351,510 attempts from January to June of this year.

On the other hand, the ranking of SEA countries dynamically changes when it comes to the percentage of users infected by phishing attacks. In Kaspersky’s phishing statistics for the first half of 2019, it shows the Philippines has the highest percentage of phishing victims at 17.3 percent. The growth posted is a whopping 65.56 percent higher compared with the data for the same period last year at 10.449 percent.

Malaysia scored the second highest with 15.8 percent of users infected through phishing from 11.2 percent in the first half of 2018. Coming behind is Indonesia with 14.3 percent from 10.7 percent last year, Thailand at 11.9 percent from 10.9 percent, and Vietnam followed closely at 11.7 percent from 9.4 percent.

Singapore recorded 5 percent this year compared to 4.1 percent posted last year. 

Phishing attempts refer to the frequency that cybercriminals try to entice Kaspersky users to visit fraudulent websites to steal their information in particular regions and territories. Meanwhile, the percentage of infected users indicates the proportion of Kaspersky users targeted by these phishing attempts within a given timeframe.

“This old but effective threat is real in Southeast Asia and shows no signs of fading anytime soon. The region is composed of many young and highly-mobile populations and, admit or not, we need to educate them on the risks of basic attacks like phishing. It is an accepted fact that the young users will buy a new phone then think of securing it physically but never virtually. And as long as individuals will continue to let their guard down when using the internet, we can be sure that we’d keep on counting phishing victims again and again,” said Yeo Siang Tiong, General Manager for Southeast Asia at Kaspersky.