20 percent spam originates from India, reports Trend Micro

Government bodies and companies have been fighting against increasing spams. According to a study by security software firm Trend Micro, about 20 percent of the spam emails which are sent worldwide originated from India. "The quarter's top spam-sending countries included India at 20 per cent, Indonesia at 13 per cent, South Korea at 12 per cent and Russia at 10 per cent," the report said. However, this isn’t a cybercrime and appears to be more of a long term or on-going campaign.

Spam that!

"The number of targeted attacks has dramatically increased. Unlike largely indiscriminate attacks that focus on stealing credit card and banking information associated with cybercrime, targeted attacks noticeably differ and are better characterised as 'cyber espionage'," said Trend Micro Country Manager India and SAARC Amit Nath.

Furthermore, the report reveals that cybercriminals have been capitalising on the growth of Android-based smartphones and the report this quarter has successfully identified about 5,000 new malicious Android apps. Talking about Android apps, it's just sometime back that we reported about the malware that newly introduced Instagram app brings to the user’s Android device if downloaded from anywhere apart from the official Android Market. This was also the case when the new Angry Birds Space was introduced. "With the increased use of smartphones for Internet access and the huge Android user base, the increase in attacks targeting the platform is thus not surprising," the report said.

It also goes on to claim that Apple which is said to be the safest operating system has the highest vulnerability. "Apple surpassed Oracle, Google and Microsoft in reported vulnerabilities, with a total of 91. Oracle came in second, with 78; Google, 73; and Microsoft, 43," it said. In the recent times, it has seen the Flashback Trojan, which has affected lakhs of Macs.