Russian cybersecurity firm, Kaspersky has revealed that attacks measuring up to 7,700 were carried out against some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa leading up to Valentine’s Day 2020.
The attacks were reportedly targeted mainly at South Africans, Kenyans, and Nigerians.
According to Kaspersky, popular dating applications in Africa were used as bait to access personal information of users and/or spread malicious software with apps like Tinder, Zooku, and co being used.
They, however, stressed that the attacks had nothing to do with the original apps as the attackers only used a cloned version of the app to attract unsuspecting users.
After baiting people to download apps and logon, the cybercriminals thereafter bombarded the unsuspecting users with unsolicited adverts or lured them to pay high-cost subscription packages
Kaspersky also added that the risk-level of the malware was dependent on the downloaded files. Some files carried Trojans that had the capacity of downloading other malware and other files carried the malware that could send an SMS on their own.
Adware was also distributed maliciously and they potentially could distribute unsolicited adverts to users who download malicious files onto their phones or their computers.
South Africa was the most attacked country during the period shouldering about 58 percent of the region’s attacks while Kenya took a distant second with about 10 percent. Nigeria was farther down, taking four percent of the attacks.
Kaspersky announced that they discovered about 7,734 attacks on about 2,548 users. Claiming that the African region went under a circulation of about 1,486 threats.
