Symantec in its recent Internet Security Report has observed
that malicious code activity globally, continued to grow at a
record pace throughout 2008, primarily targeting confidential
information of computer users. The report also observed that India
saw a substantial increase in its proportion of malicious activity
having the third highest volume of malicious activity accounting to
10 percent of the regional total.
Symantec created more than 1.6 million new malicious code
signatures in 2008 which equates to more than 60 percent of the
total malicious code signatures ever created by the company, as a
response to the rapidly increasing volume and proliferation of new
malicious code threats. These signatures helped Symantec
block an estimated average of more than 245 million attempted
malicious code attacks across the globe each month during 2008.
The report is derived from data collected by millions of
Internet sensors, first-hand research, and active monitoring of
hacker communications, and provides a global view of the state of
Internet security. The study period for the ISTR XIV covers January
2008 to December 2008. It noted that Web surfing remained the
primary source of new infections in 2008, and attackers are relying
more on customized malicious code toolkits to develop and
distribute their threats.
Computers from the United States and China were observed to be
the leading source of Web-based attacks targeting India, accounting
for 84 percent and 5 percent respectively.
“Due to a rapidly growing Internet infrastructure, a
burgeoning broadband population and rampant software piracy, India
is expected to witness increased malicious activities,” said
Vishal Dhupar, managing director, Symantec India.
“Unless enterprises improve security protocols and measures
to counter malicious activities, India will continue to be a soft
target of Internet threats.”
The report estimates that India had an average of 836 bots per
day during 2008 and there were 1,03,812 distinct bot-infected
computers observed in the country during the period, an increase of
nearly 250 percent from the previous Internet Security Threat
Report. Amongst the cities in India with the highest number of
bot-infected computers, Mumbai figured at the top with 37 percent
followed by Chennai at 24 percent and Delhi at 7 percent. Cities
such as Bangalore, Hyderabad, Calcutta, Surat, Ahmadabad, Cochin
and Pune too had a sizeable share of bot-infected computers.
In the APJ region, the report ranked India first on worms and
viruses attacks prevalence chart with 9 of the top 10 mal-codes
found in India consisting of worms (55 percent) and viruses (15
percent) that disabled security related processes, downloaded
additional threats and stole confidential information.
It also observed that 65 percent of worms and viruses in Indian
enterprises are propagated through the File Sharing/Executables
mechanism indicating that endpoint security and policy are still
missing in many organizations as this level of security protection
would have allowed IT administrators to scan removable drives for
threats.
Over the past year, Symantec has observed a 192 percent increase
in spam detected across the Internet as a whole, from 119.6 billion
messages in 2007 to 349.6 billion in 2008. The report found that
phishing continued to grow in 2008 by 66 percent over 2007 with,
55,389 detected phishing Web site hosts.