Kenya crosses 30 million cyber threats during COVID-19 pandemic: Report

Cybercrimes in Kenya have shown a considerable surge in the peak time of COVID-19 reaching 35.2 million cyberattacks between 2020 July to September, according to a report by The Star.

Reportedly detected by the data by Coordination Centre (National KE-CIRT/CC), the Kenya Computer Incident Response Team, the threats have been noted most between 2020 July to September.

The data from the Communication Authority of Kenya represented that the threat has been increased to 152.9 percent from 13.9 million detected in the previous quarter of the year.

The threats have been detected in e-commerce activities, shifting to remote working, web application attacks, and malware practices with the data, as per the report.

Presenting data on the threat, the report suggests that over 31,842,635, had been detected in malware, increasing to 154.6 percent from 12,508,275 recorded between 2020 April to June.

However, over 1,245,451, had been detected in Distributed Denial of Service(DDOS)/Botnet, increasing to 364.8 percent from 267,931 in the previous quarter.

As described DDOS is an attempt to make the network or server unavailable to its users, which looks like a temporary interruption or suspension in the service. With an increase of 86.6 percent around 2,057,369 web applications attacks were recorded, whereas reducing by 5.1 percent the system vulnerabilities lowered to 28,482 from 30,023 from 2020 April to June.

Not only cyber threats but National KE-CIRT/CC also reported an increase in online fraud and online abuse, it reported.