HYDERABAD: In the first half of 2019, India was found to be among the top 10 countries affected by password-stealer malware (PSW), a major weapon in a cybercriminal’s toolkit to sabotage users’ privacy, a research done by Kaspersky said.
The research titled ‘How to steal a million (of your data)’ found that with 8.33 per cent of the total PSW attacks in the world, India was found to be second-most affected -- behind only to Russia where 11.08 per cent of users were affected. Other affected countries were Brazil (4.9 per cent), Germany (4.73 per cent), United States (3.73 per cent) and Italy (3.55 per cent).
This malicious type of software grabs data directly from users’ web browsers using various methods. An average hacker can steal passwords, payment cards data. He/she can also copy all files from one’s computer, forward system data to others and also download files from the internet. India was the most affected by Azorult PSW, which Kaspersky termed as the ‘most widely-spread Stealer Trojans’.
"After buying (or creating) the malware, the cybercriminals set about distributing it. Most often, this is done by sending emails with malicious attachments (for example, office docs with malicious macros that in turn download the Trojan)," the report said.