The cybercrime situation in Southeast Asia in 2022 was complicated. The latest data from Kaspersky showed that the security company successfully prevented 12.38 million cyberattacks against the websites of Southeast Asian businesses last year.

The number of attacks against ASEAN businesses in 2022 was higher than the 9.18 million cases of the year before. The number of attacks in 2022 was even higher than 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic peak with 10.2 million cases.

Among ASEAN countries, Singapore had the highest growth rate of businesses suffering web attacks (329 percent). The total number of cyberattacks against the businesses of the country that Kaspersky successfully prevented was 889,000, while only 207,000 cases were reported in 2021.

Other regional leading economies witnessed rapid escalation of attacks against websites, especially in four Southeast Asian countries, namely Malaysia (+ 197 percent), Thailand (+ 63 percent), Indonesia (+ 46 percent) and the Philippines (+ 29 percent).

According to Kaspersky, of the ASEAN’s top six economies, only Vietnam witnessed a slight decrease (- 12 percent) in the number of attacks against websites targeting enterprises. It recorded 2.48 million web incidents in Vietnam in 2022, which was 2.8 million cases lower than 2021.

Regarding cryptocurrency phishing, Kaspersky reported that its systems successfully prevented more than 5 million attacks in 2022, an increase of 40 percent over the last year. 

In 2022, attacks against banking services on computers and mobile devices were no longer common. Instead, cybercriminals have gradually turned their attention to new areas, including the cryptocurrency industry. 

This explained why 5 million attacks of this kind were detected last year, higher than the 3.6 million cases in 2021. The increase was partially explained by the wobble of the cryptocurrency market last year.

Most cryptocurrency phishing cases used traditional tricks such as giving gifts or using forged ewallet pages.

In Southeast Asia, Kaspersky discovered 64,080 cryptocurrency phishing cases in 2022, down 15 percent compared with 2021. A decrease of 15 percent has been reported for Vietnam.

As for ransomware attacks, according to experts from Fortinet, BKAV and NCS, the attractive financial benefits will increase ransomware in 2023 and upcoming years.

According to HPE Vietnam, the biggest loss for businesses suffering from ransomware attacks was the business interruption, about 21 days on average. 

HPE Vietnam cited a report showing that financial losses caused by the attacks may be as high as $265 billion by 2031 and one attack against businesses' technological systems will be carried out every two seconds, with every attack possibly causing a loss of $1.85 million.

Trong Dat