Rise in SMS-based malware
Chennai ranks as fourth most infected city in country
By : DC Correspondent
Update: 2014-09-03 06:24 GMT
Chennai:Beware while opening any of those forwarded SMS jokes or MMS messages on your phone as Chennai ranks the fourth most infected city in India when it comes to mobile malware. Close on the heels of Bangalore, Hyderabad and New Delhi, the city is one of the hotspots for cyber viruses doing the rounds.
There is a rampant rise in SMS-based malware infections during the last quarter across the country, so much so that a latest threat report data reveals that about 295 new threat families and variants of mobile viruses have been discovered during this period alone.
Android phones were the most vulnerable as 294 out of 295 were on Android while one was on iOS. The top Android threats in Q2 were Trojans that either send SMS messages to premium numbers, or harvest data from a device and forward it on to a remote server, said F-Secure Labs’ Threat report H1 2014. The first half of 2014 saw an increase in online attacks that lock up user data and hold it for ransom.
The Slocker malware reported in June, which pretends to be a legitimate app, was the first ransomware to appear on the mobile platform. F-Secure research places India as a centre for bonnets – as bot infecting viruses like Ramnit and Sality are rampant.
India ranks 4th in the world in mobile malware. Personal computers in botnet are used mainly by hackers for DDOS, spamming and possibly bitcoin mining operations “Many incidents as highlighted in our threat report shows that cybercriminals constantly adapt to new trends whether in by utilising new malware or targeted attacks techniques to continue with their attacks.
2014 first half has highlighted many threats and F-Secure have also timely highlighted cyber-attacks to keep its existing and prospective users safe,” Amit Nath, country manager, India & SAARC, F-Secure “The bad guys out there are targeting far more that credit cards these days.”