According to cybersecurity firm Evina, Kenya, South Africa and Cameroon are considered the top three access points for mobile mobile attack. These African countries face suspicious cellphone-based billing transactions of 51%, 30% and 10%, respectively.
Criminals are impacting the long-term sustainability of the digital advertising and mobile payments industries, in particular, and perpetrating thousands of mobile-based fraud attempts on a daily basis.
David Lotfi, Evina's CEO, says that the young population of Africa, mostly without a bank account, and the continent has around 900 million mobile money accounts, is particularly hard hit by professional criminals from around the world, which together cost to Africa about $ 4 billion every year.
The mobile attack happens in two main ways: clickjacking, in which a criminal intercepts a legitimate click and, without knowing it, directs the user to a website with confidential financial data and others can be stolen and malicious applications that try to do the same.
While embedding malware in malicious applications can be a more refined fraudulent technique, clickjacking is a very basic type of fraud that has existed for at least five years and has almost always been eradicated in large parts of the mobile world.
“Mobile fraud is a viable obstacle to be overcome and there is really no excuse for the fact that one in three attempts at mobile subscriptions in South Africa, for example, is fraudulent. The criminals who continue to steal Africa's wealth can be defeated with the right tools that we already use to protect millions of mobile transactions every day, ”adds Lotfi.
