India fourth-most mobile malware infected country: Report
Top Android threats included trojans that send SMS to premium numbers, or harvest data from a device, says report by mobile security firm F-Secure Labs
New Delhi: India, which has over 900 million cellphones, was ranked the fourth-most mobile malware infected country in the world in the first half of the year, according to a new report by an online security firm.
Chandigarh, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and New Delhi were among cities with most infected cellphones, with Chandigarh topping the list. The national capital has the highest number of SMS-sending malware, said the report by mobile security company F-Secure Labs that was released on Monday.
There were 295 new threat families and variants that were discovered in the quarter ended June, of which 294 on Android and one on iOS. The top Android threats included trojans that either send SMS to premium numbers, or harvest data from a device and forward it on to a remote server, the report said.
In June, a malware, the Slocker, which pretended to be a legitimate app, became the first ransomware to appear on the mobile platform. Ransomware locks up user data and demands payment of a sum to unlock the files.
Highlights of the F-Secure H1, 2014 Threat Report
—Smaller cities are becoming a favourite destination for mobile malware.
—People said: “Mac doesn’t need protection?" – Malware found in Mac!
—In the PC (personal computer) malware landscape, age-old infections like the Trojan.LNK and Conficker (Downadup) are still the highest.
—India is also a centre for botnets, as bot infecting viruses like Ramnit and Sality are rampant. PCs in a botnet are used mainly by hackers for DDOS (distributed denial of service), spamming and possibly Bitcoin mining operations.
—Data snooping is trending with Chinese mobile makers.
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