Report shows Africa Records 234% Increase in Phishing Scams

According to recent data from the Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky, social engineering and phishing scams were far more common in Africa in Q2 2022 than they were in Q1 2022.

10,722,886 phishing assaults were discovered in Africa in Q2 by the company’s security solutions, a 234 percent increase over the first quarter.

The fastest surge in frauds has been observed in Africa’s tech hubs. Kenyan users have been the most affected by this form of danger, with 5,098,534 phishing assaults discovered in just three months, a 438 percent increase from the same period last year. South Africa (4,578,216 detections, an increase of 144%), then Nigeria, were the next largest countries (1,046,136 detections and a growth of 174 percent ).

Particularly during the peak travel season, con artists target tourists looking for exciting destinations, affordable lodging, and affordable airfares.

“Traveling is once again possible after the pandemic’s two-year flight restrictions. However, travel scams are also on the rise, with more fraud targeting consumers through phony rental and booking sites. Such attacks are entirely avoidable, so we advise people to be wary of extravagant offers. A deal that appears too good to be true definitely is, warns Kaspersky security specialist Mikhail Sytnik.

Researchers from Kaspersky have noticed an increase in scamming operations, with many phishing pages being provided under the pretext of travel agencies and airlines. In the META region, there were 4,311 attempts to open phishing pages related to airline and booking services in the first half of 2022.

Social engineering scams: what are they?

Scammers utilize social engineering, often known as “human hacking,” in a variety of methods and for a variety of objectives to draw unknowing people to the website and coerce them into providing personal information.

The latter frequently contains login information for social media accounts as well as financial credentials like bank account passwords or credit card numbers. When in the wrong hands, this can lead to a number of harmful activities, including the theft of money and the hacking of corporate networks.

Phishing: What Is It?

Because it is carried out on a broad scale, phishing is a powerful offensive strategy. Malicious users boost their chances of success in their search for the credentials of innocent people by sending out enormous waves of emails in the form of reputable institutions or advertising bogus pages.

Phishers utilize a number of techniques to get over email filtering and entice as many users as they can to their phony websites. HTML attachments with partially or completely disguised code are a typical tactic. Attackers can employ HTML files to deliver phishing sites as attachments rather than links, obscure malicious content to make it more difficult to detect, and leverage scripts.