India ranked No.2 globally in social media scams in 2014; digital extortion on rise too

Cyberattacks aimed at Indian businesses dealing with critical infrastructure are on rise, said the ‘Internet Security Threat Report 2014’ by Symantec. With 5% increase in infections, India is among top 10 infected countries with Regin malware. The report witnessed an increase in the number of attacks on key sectors such as financial services (17.1% in 2014, up from 11.1% in 2013), while transportation, communications, and energy saw a five time increase in the targeted attacks from 0.82% in 2013 to 4.4% in 2014. “The mining (oil & gas) sector were preferred by attackers as they received the highest number of spam emails (76%) and phishing attacks in 2014,” said Tarun Kaura, director – technology sales, India, Symantec. [caption id=“attachment_968723” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  AFP[/caption] Cybercriminals see big opportunities in small businesses, highlighted the report. In India, small businesses were the target of one-third (34%) of all targeted attacks in 2014. These businesses also received twice as many phishing mails compared to large enterprises in the country. In addition, India, last year, moved up five places to become 16th most bot infected countries in the world. Nearly 65% of bot infections are reported from metros such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Cochin. Also, India became the top source globally of originating Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, according to Symantec. With over 7 attacks per hour and 60,000 attacks a year, India became the third largest countries in Asia for ransom-ware attacks in 2014. The report noted that 86% of ransom-ware attacks were “crypto-ransomware” – a type of digital extortion where the hacker disables users system until a payment is given. Crypto-ransomware attacks were highest in India last year. India’s growing social media population has become a hotbed of cybercrime. India ranked No.2 globally in social media scams, just behind the United States. Globally, 70% scams on social media fooled users into “manual sharing” scam, the report claimed.