KUALA LUMPUR, July 18 — Malaysia is among the top three phishing targets in South-east Asia with a total of 8.27 million malicious emails blocked by Kaspersky Anti-Phishing System in 2022, said the global cybersecurity company.

Kaspersky thwarted 43.44 million phishing attacks in the region with Vietnam having the most attacks at 17.85 million followed by Malaysia in second position and Thailand at 6.28 million.

Globally, Kaspersky’s Anti-Phishing System prevented 507.85 million attempts to follow a phishing link, it said in a statement.

Kaspersky Asia Pacific managing director Adrian Hia said the global phishing trend has risen and increased markedly last year.

This tactic remains a go-to infection technique for cybercriminals because it is "effective and easy to conduct,” Hia said.

"As the bad actors continue to be creative to hack our human minds through topics we care about, we need to continuously raise our awareness and act to protect our devices against cyberthreats,” he said.

According to Kaspersky in 2022, pages impersonating delivery services had the highest percentage of clicks on phishing links blocked by its solutions at 27.38 per cent, online stores (15.56 per cent), payment systems (10.39 per cent) and banks (10.39 per cent).

"Recently, we have seen an increase in targeted phishing attacks in which scammers do not immediately move on to the phishing attack itself, but only after several introductory emails with active correspondence with the victim.

"Our experts predict that this trend is likely to continue. New tricks are also likely to emerge in the corporate sector in 2023, with attacks generating significant profits for attackers,” Hia added. — Bernama