Shift in scams targeting banks in South Africa

Cybersecurity and digital privacy company Kaspersky warns that financial phishing cyberattacks are on the rise in South Africa.

According to Kaspersky’s Financial Cyberthreats report, attacks in the financial sector are becoming increasingly corporate-oriented and shifting away from consumers.

Kaspersky Security Network data shows that the number of financial phishing attempts in the African regions increased significantly from Q1 to Q2 of 2022.

Banks, payment systems, and e-commerce websites were attacked.

Financial phishing is a deceptive way of stealing information and is gaining momentum in the region. Phishing is a type of online fraud where the scammer sends fake alerts from banks, e-pay systems and other organisations to trick consumers into sharing their financial details.

The alerts sent by the scammer can be related to loss of data, update credentials or system breakdown, which results in theft of passwords, credit card numbers, bank account details and other confidential information.

According to the Kaspersky telemetry, in Q2 of 2022 a total of 194,090 financial phishing attacks aimed at organisations were detected in South Africa, a 65% increase compared to Q1.

The largest share of attacks was directed at e-commerce websites (69%), with banks (17%) and payment systems (14%) following.

“A life without Internet is strange to us. So much so that our financial life is now digital. This is the magic of digitisation. But we also need to be aware of an unprecedented wave of challenges. Financial threats are one such challenge that is becoming more advanced in exploiting human behaviour and will only continue to grow.

“Businesses trying to stay ahead of such evolving, complex cyberattacks should make fraud prevention a focal point to control fraud transactions, eventually reduce fraud risk in the future and avoid reputation damage,” said Emad Haffar, head of technical experts at Kaspersky.

Read: South Africa’s biggest bank warns of new scams targeting customers