Bengaluru suffered highest instances of cyber attacks last year: Study

A study by Quick Heal Technologies, a computer security firm, has revealed that India's IT hub Bengaluru recorded the highest instances of cyber attack attempts in 2018. 

The very fact that Bengaluru houses some of the top corporates as well as IT companies is possibly behind its attractiveness to cyber criminals, Quick Heal co-founder Sanjay Katkar was quoted as saying in a report in The Economic Times. 

Other major cities Mumbai, National Capital Region and Kolkata were also major targets for cyber attacks, with as many as 973 million malware attacks on Windows platforms identified in 2018. This translates to an alarming 2.67 million cyber attacks a day.

According to Quick Heal, Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Pune remain ‘most at risk’ to cyber attacks. 

The study revealed that Window devices, which saw 1,985 attempts per minute last year, were targeted far higher than Android or devices on any other ecosystem. 

Cyber criminals usually target vulnerabilities on the IT systems, online or offline, to install trojan virus or download data unlawfully. Sometime these vulnerabilities exist on older versions of apps and websites that are not removed completely, at other times the nodes between various connected devices (computer, server, cloud, connected devices like a smart watch) may be left exposed with potential to be compromised.

On Windows, Ransomware was reported as the most common form of cyber attack. A ransomeware attack is when a cyber criminal gains remote access to a victim’s computer, locks her out, and demands ransom to restore access. 

On Android, most attackers took the PUA route. PUA means potentially unwanted application, which are nothing but problematic software slipped on a user’s phone with freeware or applications from untrusted sources. The PUAs give access to data and other information on the user’s device to the hacker. 

The report also noted a rise in Cryptojacking, which involves illicit use of another person’s computer for mining cryptocurrency.