India sixth in terms of users hit by mobile malware

'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 for smartphones to increase their financial gains'

NEW DELHI: 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," DipeshKaura, 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." (IANS)

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