The Guardian (Nigeria)

38 per cent of computers suffer attack in Nigeria, others

- By Adeyemi Adepetun

FROM Januar y to September 2022, computers in the industrial control systems ( ICS) en vironment were attacked using multiple means in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, including the Middle East and Turkey ( META).

Kaspersky, which revealed this, said in the META region, malicious objects were blocked on 38 per cent of ICS

computers in the region that were protected by Kaspersky solutions.

In its Kaspersky ICS CERT statistics, it explained that globally, the share of ICS computers with blocked malicious objects stands at 31.8 per cent. APT attacks on industrial systems are expected to get even more sophistica­ted in the coming months.

ICS computers are used in oil and, energy, automotive manufactur­ing, building automation infrastruc­tures and other spheres to perform a range of OT functions – from the workstatio­ns of engineers and operators to supervisor­y control and data acquisitio­n ( SCADA) servers and Human Machine Interface ( HMI).

Cyberattac­ks on industrial computers are considered to be extremely dangerous as they may cause material losses and production downtime for the controlled production line and even the facility as a whole. Moreover, industrial enterprise­s put out of service can seriously undermine a region’s social welfare, ecolog y and macroecono­mics.

During the three quarters of 2022 in the MET A region, ICS computers in the oil and gas sector faced attacks most often ( 39.3 per cent of them got attacked). Attacks on building automation systems were in second place – 38.8 per cent of ICS computers in this sector were targeted. The energy sector was also among the top- three environmen­ts that got attacked ( 36.8 per cent of computers there were affected).

In total, Kaspersky, in January to September 2022, said various types of malicious objects were blocked on 38 per cent of ICS computers in the META region. Of these, most attacks on ICS infrastruc­ture came from the Internet ( 28.2 per cent). 9.9 per cent of attacks were made through email clients. 7.0 per cent of attacks were conducted through removable media, 0.9 per cent – through network folders.

In Nigeria, various types of malicious objects were blocked on 38.7 per cent of ICS computers between JanuarySep­tember 2022. Of these, 19.4 per cent came from the Internet and 3.5 per cent of attacks were made through email clients. 10.7 per cent of attacks were conducted through removable media.

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