India sends out more spam compared to most other countries and is second only to the USA in the number of spam mails sent in the first quarter of 2013. With increasing number of people gaining access to the internet, experts feel the risk of these first-time users falling prey to phishing attacks is also great.
According to the Trend Micro Quarter 1 security roundup, India is also ranked 10th among countries with most number of bot-net connected computers.
Bot-nets, often referred to as ‘zombie armies’, is a worldwide network of computers which, without the knowledge of the user, perform background tasks like sending spam, relay viruses and other pre-programmed tasks. These bots are controlled by Command and Control (C&C) Centres run by people behind such scams.
Ironically, while India sends so much spam and is 10th on the list of bot-net connected computers, it does not even appear on the list of countries in which such C&C centres are located.
According to the survey, USA leads the list of countries with C&C centres at 35.66 per cent followed by Australia at 10.88 per cent and South Korea at 8.51 per cent. China has 5.72 per cent of all C&C centres detected this year.
“Fake apps remained a significant mobile threat in this quarter. Android users from India are acutely exposed to the risk of privacy exposure. This might have been due to the fact that almost all mobile users in the country take notice of mobile ads, which could have prompted dubious developers to create apps with aggressive advertising features,” said Amit Nath, Country Manager of India & SAARC, Trend Micro.
“This reflects badly on information security controls in the country and more Indian IP addresses will get blacklisted and banned by international watchdogs,” said Jatinder Pal Singh, a security consultant.
A recent survey by Pricewaterhouse Coopers has shown that spending on information security by Indian companies would increase in 2013.
The study also tracked top social subjects used to lure people into clicking links in spam. “Windows 8, Pope Francis and Google Glass dominated the social engineering lures in the first quarter of the year,” it said.
Malware was also detected in one million Android phones worldwide and the findings show that fake versions of websites used for financial transactions and popular android games were the favourite mode of phishing in Q1 2013.
India again stood second to Burma in the list of countries with the highest malicious Android app download volumes with 7.25 per cent of all malicious apps being downloaded within the country.