Hackers target India Inc with ransomware, trojan

Mumbai: Indian organisations were the sixth most targeted in Asia, receiving  two attacks on an average by cyber criminals, said a report by Symantec. According to latest Internet Security Threat Report, cybercriminals have made an organisational shift and are adopting corporate best practices and establishing professional businesses in order to increase the efficiency of their attacks against enterprises and consumers. Mining was the highest risk prone sector, where one out of two companies was attacked at least once last year. Around 40 per cent of BFSI businesses and public utilities were also attacked at least once.  

In the last three years, India has moved up to third place in 2015, after being seventh and fifth  in 2013 and 2015 respectively for most financial Trojan infections globally. While only 30 per cent of targeted attacks were on large enterprises in 2015, down from 60 per cent in 2014, over one in two attacks (52 per cent) were aimed at small businesses in India. According to the report, the more aggressive crypto-ransomware attack that encrypts all of a victim’s digital content and holds it hostage until a ransom is paid, grew by 35 per cent.

Commenting to the report, Tarun Kaura, the director of Symantec, said it reveals that India is the second most favoured destination for Ransomware in Asia with the average number of attacks per day increasing 114 per cent to 15 attacks per hour. Mr Kaura said India has also witnessed a 156 per cent increase in the percentage of social media scams with every sixth scam impacted an Indian making it second most attacked country in the world. Ninety-four per cent of these scams were spread through manual sharing leaving the social media population a favoured target of scammers.