Cyber Malware Threats In Indonesia Decline From Three Years Back

Mobile malware landscape in Indonesia (photo: Kaspersky)

JAKARTA - The Covid-19 pandemic still has a significant impact on Indonesia, especially in terms of digitalization, including the dependence of users on their mobile devices. This time, Kaspersky highlighted cyber threats related to the mobile malware landscape in Indonesia in the pre- and post-pandemic period.

“The future in Southeast Asia is definitely on mobile. On the surface, cybercriminals may appear less and less active as mobile malware attacks decline. But this is a global trend and doesn't mean we are becoming safer,” said Yeo Siang Tiong, General Manager for Southeast Asia at Kaspersky, in a release.

Kaspersky statistical data from 2019 – 2021 shows that the mobile malware threat landscape in Indonesia has decreased by 32.51%. In addition, the threat of mobile banking malware in Indonesia has also decreased significantly by 75.49% in the last three years.

Although there has been a decrease in the number of attacks against mobile device users in Indonesia, users should not be careless. Kaspersky experts warn attacks could become more sophisticated in both malware attacks and device functionality.

In the reporting period, after a spike in the second half of 2020, cybercrime activity gradually subsided, there was no global news or major campaigns, and the topic of Covid-19 began to fade.

At the same time, new players continue to emerge in the cyber arena as malware becomes more sophisticated, thus, the decrease in the overall number of attacks is "compensated" by the greater impact of successful attacks.

Kaspersky detected and blocked 375,547 detections of mobile malware threats in Indonesia last year, with the most detections occurring in the second quarter (April - June) with 123,602 detections. Of the more than half a million (556,482) threat detections against Indonesian users detected by Kaspersky in 2019, this fell by 32.51% in 2021.

In 2021 Kaspersky products also detected 301 mobile banking malware against Indonesia. This is a general decrease (75.49%) from 1228 detections in 2019, but also an increase of 20.88% compared to 249 detections in 2020.

The top five mobile malware detected in 2021 in Indonesia are:

Trojan Trojan-Downloader Trojan-Dropper Trojan-Proxy Trojan-SMS