A report released by cybersecurity firm ESET suggests that the scenario is not improving in India, despite a global decline in cybersecurity threats following the COVID outbreak. India is among the largest target environments for Android malware.
New data suggests that India is one of the top locations for Android malware attacks. According to the T2 2022 Threat Report published by Malware prevention and Internet Security business ESET, Android threat detection systems continued to expand in T2 2022, increasing by 9.5% yearly.
These malware agents are malicious files or code that get onto a device & begin spying on its users, sometimes going so far as to discreetly record audio and videos without raising suspicion.
GB WhatsApp’ liable for responsible applications
According to the same source, GBWhatsApp, a WhatsApp clone, WhatsApp, which provides all of WhatsApp’s regular functionality in addition to certain unique benefits, has been the primary target of Android spyware discovery during the past four months.
Due to the fact that the clone application is not distributed through the official Google Play channel and is instead sideloaded by the vast majority of its users, it poses serious safety concerns. The sideloaded file, like most APKs, is vulnerable to modification and can already be infected with malware before consumers even download it. These apps can easily spread malware throughout your system if you don’t use the Play Store to filter them out.
Whereas the malicious software may be spying on you, the day-to-day functioning of your phone may not have been much impacted, which is one of the worst aspects of a trojan virus. This makes it hard to detect and remove the attack, with a full device reset being the norm for eradicating the malware.
Mozi, an IoT botnet, has seen its numbers shrink, although India and China continue to be targeted.
The survey also found that the country was the second most common geolocation for such bots that make up the IoT botnet Mozi, behind only China.
“The biggest zombie IoT botnet ‘Mozi’ saw the number of bots drop by 23% from 500,000 compromised devices in T1 to 383,000 in T2. However, China (53%) and India (35%) continued to have the highest number of IoT bots geolocated inside the respective countries. These statistics confirm the assumption that the Mozi botnet is on autopilot, running without human supervision since its reputed author was arrested in 2021,” the report says.
