India ranks 6th in terms of users hit by mobile malware in Q2: Report

Ranked sixth, India was one of the top 10 countries with the largest share of users attacked by mobile malware in the second quarter of this year, said a new report by cybersecurity company Kaspersky on Wednesday.

The top three countries hit by mobile malware attacks remained unchanged from the previous quarter -- Iran followed by Algeria and Bangladesh.

The report revealed a drastic increase in the number of mobile malware threats detected in the second quarter of the year when compared to Q1.

In Q2, Kaspersky detected 1,245,894 malicious installers, an increase of 93,232 over the previous quarter.

"As the mobile and Internet consumption goes up, especially in countries like India and other South Asian regions, it can be predicted that cybercriminals too would shift their focus towards increasing threat actors for smartphones to increase their financial gains," Dipesh Kaura, General Manager for South Asia, Kaspersky, said in a statement.

"Some of the most popular threat actors include Adware, banking & SMS trojans as well as stalkerware, all these are greatly used by the cybercriminals to earn huge money by targeting smartphone users, and even stealing their important data to later sell it on the dark web or underground market."

Among the threats detected, adware topped the list with 48 per cent, a decrease of one percentage point from the previous quarter.

RiskTool-type potentially unwanted software ranked second among all detected threat classes.

SMS trojans hold third place among all detected threats, said the report, adding that Fakeinst and Opfake were the largest of the detected families of SMS trojans.

During the reporting period, Kaspersky detected 38,951 mobile banking trojan installer packages.

It also detected 3,805 installation packages for mobile Trojan ransomware in Q2 2020, which is 534 fewer than last quarter.

"Consumers today need to understand the importance of having a basic anti-virus or Internet security solution installed on their devices to keep their data safe," said Kaura.

--IANS

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