Dubbed “PhantomLance”, the campaign has been active since at least 2015 and is still ongoing, featuring multiple versions of a complex spyware – software created to gather victims’ data – and smart distribution tactics.
Based on the interviews conducted with nearly 300 IT business decision-makers in SEA last year, companies fear data loss and being exposed to a targeted attack the most (34%), followed by electronic leakage of data from internal systems (31%).
Researchers from security firm Kaspersky said cybercriminals are exploiting the coronavirus pandemic by actively using the topic in spreading malware such as backdoors and spyware in the past few weeks.
Named MonitorMinor, the software enables stalkers to covertly access any data and track activity on devices they are surveying, as well as the most popular messaging services and social networks.
In terms of the data involved, most incidents saw leakages of customer-related details such as personally identifiable information (53%), authentication credentials (33%), payment or credit card specifics (32%), account numbers (27%), and other personal particulars (26%).
In Asia Pacific, Kaspersky has detected 53 coronavirus-related malware in the Philippines, 93 in Bangladesh, 40 in China, 23 in Vietnam, 22 in India, and 20 in Malaysia.
From its 11th ranking last 2018, the Philippines climbed to fourth place in Kaspersky’s worldwide ranking of countries with the highest Web threat detections from January to December 2019.
