Android malware to increase in India, Report

Viruses and worms spreading through flash drives along with rise in malware targeting Android OS are the main trends of malware landscape in India in 2013, predicts ESET, a provider of security solutions to businesses and consumers. 

Although throughout 2012 detections related to certain malware (like INF/Autorun) have been decreasing in India, the threat continues. USB flash drives are still an effective way of compromising computers. One of the reasons, according to ESET researchers, is that users are prone to installing pirated software including OS itself along with pirated security software, if at all the latter is installed on the system. Besides, a very basic security practice as scanning removable media with security software is ignored by majority of Indian computer users. 
Malware for mobile phones was marked a main trend of 2012 in last year's ESET report. This time researcher focused on malware forAndroid OS as the market share of Android mobile phones have been increasing dramatically, according to a release. 

In Q1 of 2012, according to IDC statistics, the Google operating system has recorded a year-over-year rise of 145% in market share. Furthermore, Juniper in its white paper 'Banking Anytime Anywhere' estimates that in 2013, the number of users accessing banking services from their smartphones will rise to 530 million people. According to the same study, in 2011 there were only 300 million individuals who accessed banks from their phones. 

"There are over 27 million smartphone users in India, according to different estimations. Though it comes to about only 3% of total mobile phone users in the country, we see the huge growth of smartphone usage. Moreover, even the majority of cheap handsets run Android OS. Although we didn't register many cases of Android malware in India, comparing to some other countries, once Indian will start actively using their mobiles for online shopping, banking, etc. the picture will change," says Pankaj Jain, director at ESET India. 

Not only an exponential growth of mobile malware but the fact that malware is becoming more complex thus expanding the range of malicious actions they perform on an infected device makes it the main concern for security community in 2013. 

ESET highlights another trend: the malware propagation by means of removable storage devices is decreasing globally in favor of the use of an intermediary in order to attract new victims. Simply speaking, instead of compromising system through infected flash drives and other removable media, bad guys compromise web servers to host malware and then sending out the hyperlinks leading the users to the malware.