Indonesia Becomes The Third Country With The Most Financial Phishing Attacks In Southeast Asia

Phishing threat illustration (photo: Kaspersky)

JAKARTA - Phishing is the most common type of cyber crime found. In 2023, Kaspersky's anti-phishing technology managed to detect nearly 500,000 phishing attempts on business devices in Southeast Asia (SEA).

This social engineering scheme will usually offer confidence to victims to get valuable information, such as social media login, to all your identities through your social security numbers.

"Phishing is a trusted technique for cybercriminals infiltrating business networks because of its success rate," said Yeo Siang Tiong, General Manager of Southeast Asia in Kaspersky.

global cybersecurity firm Kaspersky said that this scheme might urge users to open attachments, follow links, fill out forms, or reply with personal information.

There are many types of phishing, one of which is financial phishing, which refers to fake resources associated with banking, payment systems, and digital stores. This payment system phishing includes pages that mimic well-known payment brands.

From January to December last year, Kaspersky's solution has detected and blocked a total of 455,708 financial phishing attempts targeting companies of various sizes in the region.

Moreover, Yeo added, the emergence of a generative AI can help cybercriminals make phishing messages or fraudulent resources more convincing. As a result, it becomes difficult for people to distinguish between fraud and legitimate communication.

The Philippines recorded the highest number of financial phishing with 163,279 attempts in 2023, followed by Malaysia with 124,105 attempts.

Then in third place there was Indonesia which recorded 97,465 incidents, while Vietnam was one of the rankings below it with 36,130 phishing attacks related to finance.

Not to forget, Thailand and Singapore also recorded the lowest number of threats, namely 25,227 and 9,502 financial phishing attacks, respectively.