India Increasingly becoming Victim of Online Financial Fraud

Internationally known provider of computer security solutions Symantec Corporation said on October 10, 2007 that India was another country rapidly participating in financial fraud on the Internet and has was also becoming a victim of it. Such online financial fraud in India has increased by 81% during the last few months.

According to the Internet Security Threat Report of the company that was published towards September end 2007, India occupies the 14th position globally in hosting phishing sites. The city of Mumbai accounted for 30% of all phishing Websites in the country, Delhi for 29%, and Chennai and Bangalore hosted 12% each of all phishing Websites.

In the online food chain fraud, India has a major involvement where 33 Websites have been turned into phishing sites. These sites leveraged attacks to allow identity theft in 2006, Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director of Symantec, India told reporters. The Economic Times published this in news on October 10, 2007.

So far in 2007, there hasn't been any significant virus outbreak following hackers' shift to making fortunes than acquiring fame in the cyber world, Dhupar said. And these attackers have been targeting more of home PCs, Dhupar added.

In 2006, about 86% of home PCs were under attack in the cities of Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi. With a rapid growth and speed of Internet bandwidth, nearly 59% of home PC users in India used technologies like network sharing, and online socializing and playing, Dhupar said.

According to Symantec, cyber criminals are increasingly targeting victims by taking advantage of trusted environments. Symantec's study mentions that India is sixth in the global ranking of countries for computers having multiple infections. Incidentally, the top most rank goes to USA.

China also placed itself among the top countries in terms of five parameters - countries with malicious activity, top countries suffering DoS (Denial of Service) outbreaks, countries with bot-infected PCs, countries as origin of attacks, and countries with multi-infectious computers.

Cyber criminals who sell stolen data do so using underground servers. Such data include identification details like Social Security numbers, bank cards, credit cards, PINs, e-mail addresses and user accounts.

Related article: India Remains an Easy Target for Hackers in '06

» SPAMfighter News - 10/26/2007