- Cyber criminal forged reliable tools such as chatgpt and office to target small businesses with malware
- Puas and fake apps that hit SMBS hardest
- Backdoors, Trojans and downloaders dominate threat types throughout Europe and Africa
Cyber criminals are constantly abusing the trust, small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) have in certain tools to try to smuggle malware on their IT infrastructure, experts have warned.
A report from Kaspersky has claimed Chatgpt, Microsoft Office apps and Google Workspace Suite are among the most counterfeit products when hackers try to do their worsr.
It found that companies are bombarded with false applications – in almost a quarter of events (24%) across Europe, cyber criminals tried to insert a back door. Trojans (17%) and downloader (16%) are also pretty popular. In Africa, the back doors dominate with more than half of all recorded incidents (55%), followed by Dangerousobjects (very suspicious files or behaviors that are not yet classified under a specific malware category – 14%), and Trojans (13%).
Back doors, trojans and more
“Small businesses are facing business level threats, often with start -up budgets,” says Marc Rivero, Lead Security Researcher at Global Research and Analysis Team (Great) at Kaspersky.
“The key is to know where to focus their limited resources for maximum protection. The best defense against sophisticated malware is not the most expensive tool – it is to understand how attackers think and close the doors they are looking for.”
In Europe, Austria was the most attacked country where he took 40% of all discovered cases where potentially unwanted applications (PUAs) and other malware were disguised as trusted tools.
Italy (25%), Germany (11%), Spain (10%) and Portugal (6%) rounded top five, with remarkable mentions were France and the UK. Africa’s Austria in this context is Morocco with 41% of all detected PUAs targeting SMBs. Tunisia (24%), Algeria (16%) and Senegal (7%) are said to be greatly affected.
Hackers have always leaned on passing trends to try to implement malware. When Chatgpt first appeared, it didn’t have an app – just an interface in browser. Cybercriminals saw this as an opportunity to advertise – via stolen Facebook business accounts – GPT apps for both desktop and mobile, through which the distributed infoTeals, back doors and various Trojans.
