Malware Infection Index 2016 Highlights Key Threats Undermining Cybersecurity in Asia Pacific: Microsoft Report

SINGAPORE – 7
JUNE 2016 – Microsoft
Asia today announced the launch of its Malware Infection Index 2016 (MII2016),
which identifies the key malware threats in the region and ranks markets in
Asia Pacific according to how much they are affected.

The top three most
encountered malware include Gamarue, a malicious computer worm that is commonly
distributed via exploit kits and social engineering; and Skeeyah and Peals
which are trojans that try to look innocent to convince you to install them.
These malware can steal your personal information, download more malware, or
give a malicious hacker access to your PC. The findings are based on data from
the Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC) and the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report (SIRv20).

The Asia Pacific
region is especially vulnerable with emerging markets most at risk of malware
threats. Out of the top five locations across the globe most at risk of
infection, a total of four are from the Asia Pacific — Pakistan, Indonesia,
Bangladesh and Nepal, topping the rankings at first, second, fourth and fifth
places respectively in terms of computers encountering malware.

In fact, the Windows
Defender Advanced Threat Hunting team in April reported the discovery of a group of cybercriminals, dubbed
PLATINUM, who have actively since 2009 been targeting governmental
organizations, defense institutes, intelligence agencies, and telecommunication
providers in South and Southeast Asia.

The Malware Infection Index 2016 revealed the locations with the highest
malware encounter rates was Pakistan, followed by Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nepal
and Vietnam respectively. Each country had an average of close to 40 percent or
more computers encountering malware, compared to the worldwide average of only
20.8 percent, as of 4Q 2015, up from 17.6 percent in 1Q 2015.

The top three
most-encountered malware families in the Asia Pacific region were Gamarue, a
worm which can give a malicious hacker control of your PC; and Trojans Skeeyah
and Peals, which can steal personal information, download more malware or give
hackers access to your PC.

Gamarue is
particularly prevalent in the ASEAN region and was the third most commonly
encountered malware family worldwide in 2H 2015. Certain heavily affected
locations such as Indonesia reported Gamarue encounter rates of over 20 percent
in 4Q 2015, close to the worldwide encounter rates for all threat families
combined for the quarter.

It is commonly
distributed via exploit kits and social engineering and has been observed to
steal information from the local computer and communicate with command-and-control
servers managed by attackers. It is particularly prevalent in Mongolia, with 35
computers infected out of every 1,000 running the Microsoft Malicious Software
Removal Tool (MSRT) in 2H 2015.

Trojans Peals and
Skeeyah are generic detections for a variety of threats that share certain
characteristics. Trojan encounters increased 57 percent from 2Q 2015 to 3Q 2015
and remained at a high through the end of the year, which was attributed to
increased encounters with Peals and Skeeyah. They have been observed to
download and install other malware, use your computer for click fraud, steal
information like usernames and browsing history and give your PC access to a
remote malicious hacker.

Keshav Dhakad,
regional director, Intellectual Property & Digital Crimes Unit, Microsoft
Asia, said, “The rising sophistication and targeted cyberattacks are causing
devastating disruption and losses of data and information across all computer
and Internet user segments. In fact, it generally takes on average up to 200 days
for organizations to find out that they have been victims of cyberattacks.”

“We are noticing that
four key common IT environment issues. Firstly, the usage of IT assets which
are old, unprotected, or are non-genuine in nature, Secondly, unmanaged and unregulated
IT assets usage, procurement and maintenance. Thirdly, poor cyberhygiene of
users and negligent employee behaviour inside companies. Fourthly, the
inability of the companies to timely monitor, detect and remove modern cyber
threats, among others, are some of the common causes for cybercrime risks.”

As part of Microsoft’s
commitment to building trust in technology in the region, a new Cybersecurity
Center (CSC) to advance the fight against cyberthreats was opened in South
Korea in March, following a similar launch in Singapore last February. The CSCs
drive greater public-private partnerships to fight cybercrime, as well as
strengthen the cooperation with local businesses, governmental and academic
organizations on cybersecurity. These CSCs are an extension of the Microsoft
Cybercrime Center in Redmond, USA, the headquarters of Microsoft Digital Crimes
Unit (DCU). The other Satellite Centers in Asia are located in Singapore,
Beijing, Tokyo and India.