Morocco, African country most affected by cyber banking extorsion

The International Criminal Police Organization’s (Interpol) African Bureau of Cybercrime Operations recently unveiled its Africa Cyber Threat Assessment Report for 2022, revealing that Morocco is the African country most affected by banking Trojans and Stealers.

The document provides an overview of trends in cyber threat in the African region, as data from Trend Micro, the global leader in enterprise cloud security, XDR and cybersecurity platform solutions, sheds light on the kingdom’s vulnerability.

The Interpol report cites 18,827 detections in Morocco, placing it ahead of South Africa (6,560 malware detections), Nigeria (5,366), Cameroon (1,462) and Algeria (691).

Banking Trojans and Stealers can be installed manually or remotely using techniques such as emails containing malicious links or attachments.

“Once installed, banking Trojans and Stealers collect personal information from an infected computer and communicate this stolen data via the Internet to a remote server controlled by the hacker,” the report said.

Cybercriminals can use the information obtained to steal money directly from the victim or sell the information on underground markets.

The report also revealed that the most prevalent banking Trojans and Stealers are Zbot and Fareit.

The former accounts for 67.67% of all detections in the region, while the latter accounts for 15.39%. For experts, “the use of these two malware has increased in recent years, affecting African businesses and individuals.

The report also ranks Morocco in second place for Ransomware, right behind South Africa.

The country accounts for 42% of all detected attacks. It is followed by Morocco, where 8% of the attacks were registered, Botswana and Egypt (6%) and Tanzania and Kenya (4%).

“Data collected from ransomware leak sites for the period January-September 2022 indicates that African victims are targeted by a wide range of ransomware families,” the report continues.