Pakistan, Indonesia, the Palestinian territories, Bangladesh, and Nepal attract the highest rates of attempted malware attacks, according to Microsoft Corp.
Countries that attracted the fewest include Japan, Finland, Norway and Sweden, Microsoft said in a new study, based on sensors in systems running Microsoft anti-malware software.
“We look at north of 10 million attacks on identities every day,” said Microsoft manager Alex Weinert, although attacks do not always succeed.
About half of all attacks originate in Asia and one-fifth in Latin America.
Millions occur each year when the attacker has valid credentials, Microsoft said, meaning the attacker knows a user’s login and password. A technology known as machine learning can often detect those attacks by looking for data points such as whether the location of the user is familiar.
On average, 240 days elapse between a security breach in a computer system and detection of that breach, said Tim Rains, director of security at Microsoft. The study, Microsoft Security Intelligence report, comes out Thursday.
Rage bait isn’t just clickbait — it’s Oxford University Press’ word of the year for 2025 iStock/Gemini AI 
Online Trends iStock
Rage bait isn\u2019t just clickbait \u2014 it\u2019s Oxford University Press\u2019 word of the year for 2025 iStock/Gemini AI 
