Mumbai mobiles affected: Delhi saw most malware-hit PCs in 2014

NEW DELHI: Malware, or malicious software, infections of personal computers and mobile phones are on the rise in India as cybercriminals find new ways to steal users’ personal information. Delhi reported maximum number of malware-affected PCs last year, and Mumbai topped the list for mobile phone infections, according to a report by Finnish security firm F-Secure titled, ‘The state of Internet in India’.

Banking-related malware such as ‘Ramnit’, used to steal user names and passwords and mostly spread through USB removable drives, were prevalent in India, the report said.

It added that many of the malware infections were botnet-related. A botnet is a collection of Internet-connected programs communicating with other similar programs to send spam email or participate in distributed denial-of-service attacks, allowing hackers to take control of a user’s computer.

About 22% of mobile phones in Mumbai were likely to be infected by malware last year, according to the report. Chandigarh (10%), Delhi (9%), Chennai (8%) and Gurgaon (8%) followed in terms of infected mobile phones.

Mobile malwares are capable of collecting information related to API key, GPS location, international mobile equipment identity (IMEI) number, network operator and other key details from a device.

The main cause of mobile phone infections in India last year was premium rate SMS-related malware that attack Android systems.