India second to Russia in cyber-attack vulnerability

India was placed at the second spot in the list of most cyber attack-prone countries for mobile devices, with a major chunk of these intrusions designed for phishing and stealing banking details, according to a report by security software maker Kaspersky.

The Russian cyber security solutions firm Kaspersky Lab said Russia reported the most cyber-attacks on mobile phones, accounting for 40.34 per cent of all attacked unique users.

India, with 7.9 per cent of attacks, was next on the list, followed by Vietnam (3.96 per cent), Ukraine (3.84 per cent) and the UK (3.42 per cent), Germany (3.2 per cent), Kazakhstan (2.88 per cent), the US (2.13 per cent), Malaysia (2.12 per cent) and Iran (2.01 per cent) made up the rest of the list.

According to network security firm Kaspersky Labs, during 2013 nearly 100,000 new malicious programmes for mobile devices were detected, over double the previous year's figure of 40,059 samples, Kaspersky said.

''About 98.1 per cent of all mobile malware detected in 2013 targeted Android devices,'' it added. According to the report, about four million malicious applications were being used by cybercriminals to distribute mobile malware for Android-based devices.

''The majority of mobile malware in 2013 targeted users' money. The number of mobile malware modifications designed for phishing, the theft of bank card information and money from bank accounts increased by a factor of almost 20,'' it said.

According to Rolf von Roessing, the former international vice president of the Information Systems Audit and Control Association, ISACA, who spoke at the 2013 EuroCACS information security and risk management conference in London a ''tidal wave'' of threats was emerging against mobile devices.

According to Kaspersky, Android users were particularly vulnerable, with over 91 per cent of the malware detected targeting the popular mobile operating system.

According to von Roessing, Android was currently more of a target than iOS, but attacks were happening against Apple mobile devices and, when they were breached, it was usually fairly serious.

HawaiiReporter quoted Christopher Burgess, CEO of Prevendra a Security, privacy and intelligence company as saying Kaspersky's findings were consistent with the numbers being reported by other security vendors in their annual threat reports.

He added if one was using a mobile device, users would do well to keep their operating system up to date, only download apps from trusted sources, and have in place security software to protect the content of their mobile device.