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India second most prone country to cyber attacks on mobile devices: Kaspersky

India second-most prone country to cyber-attacks on mobile devices: Kaspersky

By Press Trust of India | Updated: 3 March 2014 19:41 IST

India is the second-most prone country to cyber-attacks on mobile devices, according to a recent report by Kaspersky Lab. A major chunk of these mobile-focused cyber-attacks is made up of intrusions designed for phishing and stealing banking details..

Russian cybersecurity solutions firm Kaspersky Lab said Russia topped the list of attacks on mobile phones, accounting for 40.34 percent of all attacked unique users.

India, with 7.9 percent of attacks, stood on the second spot, followed by Vietnam (3.96 percent), Ukraine (3.84 percent) and the UK (3.42 percent).

Other countries in the top 10 included Germany (3.2 percent), Kazakhstan (2.88 percent), the US (2.13 percent), Malaysia (2.12 percent) and Iran (2.01 percent).

During 2013, nearly 100,000 new malicious programs for mobile devices were detected, more than twice the previous year's figure of 40,059 programs, Kaspersky said.

"About 98.1 percent of all mobile malware detected in 2013 targeted Android devices," it added.

The report also found that about four million malicious applications were used by cybercriminals to distribute mobile malware for Android-based devices.

"The majority of mobile malware in 2013 targeted users' money. The number of mobile malware modifications designed for phishing, the theft of bank card information and money from bank accounts increased by a factor of almost 20," it said.

Kaspersky added that it had blocked about 2,500 attempted infections by banking trojans.

"Banking trojans are by far the most dangerous type of mobile malware for users. Some of those detected in 2013 were more geared towards stealing money from bank accounts rather than from a victim's mobile account, which significantly increases the potential losses," it said.

Vulnerabilities in the Android OS architecture and its growing popularity were important factors behind the increase in Android banking trojans in 2013, according to the report.

Cybercriminals appear to have become obsessed with this method of making money. At the beginning of the year there were just 64 known banking trojans, but by the end of 2013 Kaspersky Lab's collection contained 1,321 unique samples.

"Today, the majority of banking trojan attacks target users in Russia and the CIS. However, that is unlikely to last for long: given the cybercriminals' keen interest in user bank accounts, the activity of mobile banking trojans is expected to grow in other countries in 2014," Kaspersky Lab Virus Analyst Victor Chebyshev said.

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Further reading: Android, Cyber, Cyber Attacks, Cyberattacks, Cybersecurity, Hack, Hackers, Hacking, India, JellyBean, KitKat, Mobiles, Security, User, Users, Kaspersky, Malware, Trojan, Trojans