With the recent Taliban takeover of the Afghanistan government, cybercriminals are also attacking the country for their own benefits. Atlas VPN stated that according to the data from Kaspersky Cyberthreat Map collected between August 5 to September 4, 1.77% of all ransomware attacks were targetting Afghanistan.
A new political system
While businesses in the country are trying to adapt to the new political system, most of the workers were unable to go to work or fled the country. During this period, cybercriminals started launching ransomware attacks on SMBs from the country. Atlas VPN also stated that the most popular malware used in ransomware attacks in the past month was Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Wanna.m malware with 14.64%. It belongs to the WannaCry type malware family which encrypts user files and spreads by exploiting a vulnerability in the Server Message Block protocol.
Another country on the list is Papua New Guinea which has suffered from 1.69% of ransomware attacks. Pakistan became third, being threatened by 1.36% of attacks. Bangladesh and Iran are next, suffering from 1.12% and 1.03% of threats.