Indian

cybersecurity research and software firm Quick Heal has published its annual

threat report for 2019, disclosing its observation of trends in cyber attacks

through 2019. In an interesting but unsurprising find by Quick Heal, the report

states that four Indian metropolices were the most affected by cyber attacks

across the nation. 

These four are Mumbai,

Delhi, Bengaluru and Kolkata, in decreasing order of cyber attack volumes. The

report also ranks Maharashtra, Delhi and West Bengal as the top three states

where cyber attacks were most targeted at, giving a brief glimpse at the

demographic of cyber attacks in India.

The report also breaks

down the majority of cyber attacks in India into two clear operating systems

divisions Windows and Android, which cover the overwhelming majority of

devices in India. For Windows devices, a staggering 973 million instances of

attacks were registered through the past one year, which can be roughly equated

to 1,852 Windows machines being affected every minute of the year. Trojans,

which are most frequently generated through illegitimate software copies, are

the biggest damage inflictor in India over the past one year, continuing

India's gradually increasing issues with illegitimate software. 

Standalone worms and infectors were the second and third largest causes

of cyber attacks, and while ransomware attacks were the least frequently

spotted in India, at least one PC was affected via ransomware attacks every 14

minutes, lending perspective to the rapidly growth threat of cyber terrorism.

Even crypto-theft attacks are not far behind, with 11 attacks registered across

the country every minute. Furthermore, six of the top 10 tools used for cyber

attacks were trojans, further highlighting the need to shift to genuine

software copies. On Android, the intensity of attacks appears to be far less

than the bombardment on Windows PCs. Unwanted applications, or forged/duplicate/malicious

apps downloaded on Android phones appear to be the most impactful cyber attack

tool on Android, with infected apps striking once every three minutes, at the

least. Malware, adware and hidden infected apps on the Google Play Store appear

to be the biggest cause of concern, according to Quick Heal's report, giving

yet another reason for Google to pay even closer attention to device security.