India Ranks 5th as originator of Internet Security Threats

India is becoming a hotbed of Internet Security Threats, especially spam. She is now ranked 5th (from earlier 11th) as originator of all Internet Security Threats. Interestingly BRIC (India, China, Brazil & Russia) economies contribute to biggest chunk threats – being 4 countries in top 7. These findings were revealed by Symantec Internet Security Threat report released recently.

Interesting Statistics on Internet Security Threats Report

• India experienced a surge in malicious activity in 2009, moving from 11th to 5th for overall malicious activity in 2008 to fifth in this period.
• India also accounted for 15 percent of all malicious activity in the Asia-Pacific/Japan (APJ) region, an increase from 10 percent in 2008.
• In 2009, the United States had the most overall malicious activity, with
  19% of the total as compared to 23% on previous year. China was 2nd with 8% of all threats, followed by Brazil (6%)
• In 2009, 60 percent of identities exposed were compromised by hacking attacks.
• The top Web-based attacks observed in 2009 primarily targeted vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer and applications that process PDF files.

• In 2009, the financial sector remained the sector most heavily targeted by phishing attacks, accounting for 74 percent of the brands used in phishing campaigns

• The education sector accounted for 20 percent of data breaches that could lead to identity theft during this period, more than any other sector.
• In 2009 physical theft or loss accounted for 37 percent of data breaches that could lead to identity theft—a decrease from 48 percent in 2008.
• Hacking accounted for 60 percent of the identities exposed in 2009, a marked increase from 22 percent in 2008.
• The United States was the country of the most bot-infected computers in 2009, accounting for 11 percent of the global total.
• Mozilla Firefox was affected by 169 new vulnerabilities in 2009, more than any other browser; there were 94 new vulnerabilities identified in Apple Safari, 45 in Microsoft Internet Explorer, 41 in Google® Chrome and 25 in Opera.
• Trojans made up 51 percent of the volume of the top 50 malicious code samples reported in 2009
• The most common type of spam detected in 2009 was related to Internet-related goods and services such as online degrees, which made up 29 percent of all detected spam.