Financial Institutions in Nigeria, Others Battle Cyber Mercenaries

Cyber mercenaries or hackers-for-hire are evolving their techniques and upgrading their toolset to continue stealing sensitive information, a trend that poses a big challenge to companies across Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa, with damaging consequences for banks.

Despite research showing an overall decrease in certain malware families and types in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in the first half of 2020 (36% decrease in South Africa, 26 percent decrease in Kenya and a 2.7% decrease in Nigeria), Kaspersky, an internet security company stresses that the human cyber threat remains rife, where Africa is not immune to the evolving techniques of Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), as well as the possibilities of being a future target of a hacking-for-hire threat actor groups.

Three cyber mercenary groups have been exposed across the world this year alone. As this activity has taken place outside of Africa, Kaspersky suspect that these types of actors may have been somewhat forgotten and do not necessarily form part of cyber defence strategies.

Nevertheless, the region may become a focus of these groups in the coming months and thus, businesses and entities need to have an understanding of these emerging threats, along with the threat of APTs, to be prepared and take proactive steps towards effective cybersecurity.

Hackers-for-hire or cyber mercenaries do not necessarily have monetary motivations like traditional cybercrime. Instead, they steal private data to monetise it in a different way – usually for the purpose of providing advice or insights, based on the data, to share value of competitive advantage.

For example, a bank might get targeted and have its data analysed to gain an understanding of its market exposure, clients, and back-end systems. A competitor can use that to gain significant benefits.

The reality is that in this evolving cyber threat landscape, no company or government institution can consider themselves safe.

In South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria, APT groups are exploiting the current uncertainty around COVID-19 to steal sensitive information.

More sophisticated techniques have emerged that delivers malware in non-conventional ways. While overall malware attacks in South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria decreased during the first two quarters of 2020, certain malware types, such as the STOP ransomware, are proving increasingly popular for certain cybercriminals.