1,852 Cyber Attacks Hit India Each Minute Last Year; Mumbai, Delhi Most Affected

Indian cybersecurity research and software firm Quick Heal has published its annual threat report for 2019, disclosing its observation of trends in cyber attacks through 2019. In an interesting but unsurprising find by Quick Heal, the report states that four Indian metropolitans were the most affected by cyber attacks across the nation. These four are Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Kolkata, in decreasing order of cyber attack volumes. The report also ranks Maharashtra, Delhi and West Bengal as the top three states where cyber attacks were most targeted at, giving a brief glimpse at the demographic of cyber attacks in India.

The report also breaks down the majority of cyber attacks in India into two clear software divisions — Windows and Android, which cover the overwhelming majority of devices in India. For Windows devices, a staggering 973 million instances of attacks were registered through the past one year, which can be roughly equated to 1,852 Windows machines being affected every minute of the year. Trojans, which are most frequently generated through illegitimate software copies, are the biggest damage inflictor in India over the past one year, continuing India's gradually improving issues with legitimate software.

Standalone worms and infectors were the second and third largest causes of cyber attacks, and while ransomware attacks were the least frequently spotted in India, at least one PC was affected via ransomware attacks every 14 minutes, lending perspective to the rapidly growth threat of cyber terrorism. Even crypto-theft attacks are not far behind, with 11 attacks registered across the country every minute. Furthermore, six of the top 10 tools used for cyber attacks were trojans, further highlighting the need to shift to genuine software copies.

On Android, the intensity of attacks appear to be far lesser than the bombardment handed out to Windows PCs. Unwanted applications, or forged/duplicate/malicious apps downloaded on Android phones appear to be the most impactful cyber attack tool on Android, with infected apps striking once every three minutes, at the least. Malware, adware and hidden infected apps on the Google Play Store appear to be the biggest cause of concern, according to Quick Heal's report, giving yet another reason for Google to pay even closer attention to device security.