India second in list of countries facing cyber attack on mobiles

India is the second-most prone to cyber attacks on mobile devices, with a major chunk of these intrusions designed for phishing and stealing banking details, a report by security software maker Kaspersky said.

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

India, with 7.9% of attacks, stood at the second spot, followed by Vietnam (3.96%), Ukraine (3.84%) and the UK (3.42%).

Other countries in the top 10 included Germany (3.2%), Kazakhstan (2.88%), the US (2.13%), Malaysia (2.12%) and Iran (2.01%).

During 2013, nearly 100,000 new malicious programs for mobile devices were detected, more than double the previous year's figure of 40,059 samples, Kaspersky said.

'About 98.1% of all mobile malware detected in 2013 targeted Android devices,' it added.

The report also found that about four million malicious applications were 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.

Kaspersky added that it had blocked about 2,500 attempted infections by banking Trojans.

'Banking Trojans are by far the most dangerous type of mobile malware for users. Some of those detected in 2013 were more geared towards stealing money from bank accounts rather than from a victim's mobile account, which significantly increases the potential losses,' it said.

Vulnerabilities in the Android OS architecture and its growing popularity were important factors behind the increase in Android banking Trojans in 2013.

Cybercriminals appear to have become obsessed with this method of making money. At the beginning of the year there were just 64 known banking Trojans, but by the end of 2013 Kaspersky Lab's collection contained 1,321 unique samples.

'Today, the majority of banking Trojan attacks target users in Russia and the CIS. However, that is unlikely to last for long: given the cybercriminals' keen interest in user bank accounts, the activity of mobile banking Trojans is expected to grow in other countries in 2014,' Kaspersky Lab Virus Analyst Victor Chebyshev said.