India 3rd most affected nation by online banking malware

Growing Internet penetration and rising popularity of online banking have made India a favourite among cybercriminals, who target online financial transactions using malware, security solutions provider Trend Micro said.

According to the firm, India ranks third after Japan and the US in the tally of countries most affected by online banking malware during the April-June quarter of 2014.

Japan topped the list with the highest number of online banking malware infections this quarter due to VAWTRAK. In May alone, it saw 13,000 malware infections.

The US saw about 5,000 malware infections during the month, followed by India at 3,000 attacks.

"India posed for cybercriminal expansion with an average of 2.5 million malware detection in a given month. Also, 33 per cent more malicious apps were downloaded and network traffic from affected computers continued to rise," TrendLabs Director Myla V Pilao told PTI. TrendLabs is Trend Micro's research and development centre.

These and many such incidents show that cybercriminals will always adapt to new trends and situations whether in the use of new malware or targeted attacks techniques to continue their attacks, she added.

She said the severity of attacks has intensified against financial and banking institutions as well as retail outlets globally.

"Total attacks have exposed more than 10 million personal records as of July 2014 and that strongly indicates that organisations need to adopt a more strategic approach to safeguarding digital information," she said.

Such incidents often lead to stealing of consumer's personal information like customer names, passwords, email addresses, home addresses, phone numbers, and date of birth.

These types of personal privacy breaches have affected organisation's sales and earnings, while leaving customers unable to access accounts and dealing with service disruption, Pilao said.

"The pace of change in technology sector has never been as rapid as it is now, and as a result we see firms struggling to keep up with the latest developments," she said.

Pilao added that it is essential that Indian businesses treat information security as a principal constituent of business strategy as time and again it has emerged as one of the top countries witnessing cybercrime.

"The incidents observed during this quarter further establish the need for a more comprehensive approach to security," TrendLabs Director Myla V Pilao said.

A report by another security solutions firm McAfee said India is the fourth most affected country in Asia, with 786 phishing domains and 1,557 servers hosting suspect content.

Also with 145 spamming domains originate from India, the country is the eighth most affected country in the Asia Pacific region.

According to government's cyber security arm Computer Emergency Response Team-India (CERT-In), 62,189 cyber security incidents were reported in the first five months of the current calendar year.

Also, till May this year, 9,174 Indian websites were hacked by various hacker groups spread across the world.