14 DAY TRIAL // Trend Micro, in collaboration with the Organizations of American States, has released an interesting study on the cybersecurity trends in Latin America and the Caribbean.
According to the paper, entitled “Latin American and Caribbean Cybersecurity Trends and Government Responses,” governments are aware of the risks posed by cyber threats, and many of them have already started taking steps in the right direction.
However, in many countries, the lack of resources prevents governments from enhancing their cybersecurity capabilities.
On the other hand, while governments are aware of the threats, the general population is not. Experts have found that citizens don’t know too much about cybercrime and hacking and don’t always keep their antivirus application up to date.
In addition, they pay little attention to security concerns.
Similar to other parts of the world, Latin America also has two types of hacker groups: ones that are politically motivated, and ones that operate for financial gain.
However, experts warn that attacks against industrial control systems (ICS) and other critical infrastructures are on the rise.
Such attacks have taken place against a publicly operated national energy utility, a group of financial institutions that form the base of the special economic zone of a country, and a major telecommunications service.
Those who have attacked the telecoms company have been caught and convicted, but this seldom happens.
When it comes to the tools utilized by cybercriminals, banking Trojans such as Bancos, and botnets are the most prevalent.
“In contrast to the preference for paid and proxy servers manifested by criminals in Eastern Europe, those in Latin America prefer using free hosting services. Malware, C&C servers, phishing pages, and other malicious content used by the cybercriminals in Latin America are often hosted on Dot TK or other free web-hosting sites based in Eastern Europe,” the report reveals.
The complete study is available for download here.