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The Nairobian

Survey links Kenya's cyber attacks to China

News

By Dominic Omondi | May 24, 2016

Most of the cyber-attacks on Kenyan corporations and individuals in the first three months of 2016 came from China, according to a new survey.

According to the latest global Threat Index by cyber security vendor, Check Point, the cyber criminals targeted the country’s ubiquitous mobile devices.

The index is based on threat intelligence drawn from Check Point’s ThreatCloud World Cyber Threat Map which tracks how and where cyber-attacks are taking place.

Besides China, other sources of cyber-attacks included the US and Germany, some of the world’s greatest economies and technology powerhouses.

However, a security engineer at Check Point Micheal Tumusiime was quick to clarify that some of the cyber attackers might have duped observers into believing they were operating in China when in fact they were not.

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“It could be someone next door. You know how difficult it is to get information from China’s authorities. So it helps criminals to say that they are in China,” explained Tumusiime.

Cybercrime - crime committed via the Internet or any other computer network - has been on the rise in Kenya and Africa in general, as people have taken up smartphones in large numbers.

According to audit firm PWC’s report, most corporations in Kenya can’t tell whether or not they were victims of cyber-attacks, in what Tumusiime describes as “blissful ignorance”.

“The problem in Kenya is that people don’t know that they don’t know,” said Check Point Country Manager Duncan Andega, who said that there was need for an awareness campaign on cyber crime.