There Are 53 Million Cyber Bruteforce Attacks In Southeast Asia, Indonesia Is The Most

JAKARTA - Password hacking continues to be a tool trusted by cybercriminals to try to infiltrate the businesses of companies in Southeast Asia (SEA).

Kaspersky's latest findings reveal that in the period January to December 2024, there were more than 53 million gross attacks.

Bruteforce.Generic.RDP., is a method of guessing passwords or encryption keys involving a systematic experiment of all possible character combinations until they finally find the right one. A brutal attack that succeeded in allowing attackers to obtain valid user credentials.

While the device is outside the company's local network, away from the protection of IT's department, classified information will always have great potential to be stolen or lost due to carelessness.

Every day, we look at more than 145,000 attempts to break into the company's password and encryption and MSMEs in Southeast Asia. This number is very much given the lack of cybersecurity staff in the region," commented Adrian Hia, Managing Director for Asia Pacific at Kaspersky.

Indonesia and Malaysia recorded the most attacks. A total of 14,662,615 RDP attacks were aimed at companies in Indonesia last year. This number is 25% higher than 11,703,925 gross attacks in 2023.

On the other hand, Malaysia experienced a 14% increase with 3,198,767 gross attacks in 2024 compared to only 2,810,648 in 2023.

Meanwhile, Vietnam became the second highest country with more than 19.8 million attacks, followed by Thailand (7.2 million), Singapore (4.2 million), and the Philippines (1.5 million).

Adrian also highlighted how technological developments are increasingly sophisticated, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) strengthening cyber attacks.

With AI, hackers now have a more sophisticated tool for guessing passwords and breaking encryption quickly. This opens up opportunities to remotely access target computers without being detected," he added.

Therefore, Adrian stressed the importance of companies to re-evaluate their IT security systems thoroughly in order to face increasingly complex and massive threats.