Nearly 20% of Indian users faced cyberthreats from web attacks in Q3 2024: Kaspersky

Computer users in India have faced over 11 million internet-borne cyberthreats and nearly 14 million local incidents on their devices during the third quarter of 2024 through July to September. It was revealed in the quarterly data from Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) released by global security company Kaspersky.

Overall, 18.7% of users were attacked by web-borne threats during this period, while 19.9% of users in this country were attacked by local threats during this period. This places India among the top 100 countries where users are vulnerable to threats from both web and local infections. When it comes to the dangers associated with surfing the web, India is at the 89th place worldwide. India is at the 90th place worldwide for local threats to computers via worms and virus files.

According to the KSN report, Kaspersky web security solutions blocked 11,015,419 different Internet-borne cyberthreats during the period July to September 2024. In internet-borne threat, file-less malware continued to be the most dangerous form of web threat this quarter as well. This is because it is tough to detect, as its malicious code uses registry or WMI subscriptions for persistence, leaving no single object for static analysis on the disk.

Social engineering like phishing, baiting and pretexting remained a popular mode of cyberattack on computer users in the country. The KSN report for the third quarter of 2024 showed that cyber criminals exploited the vulnerabilities in the browsers and their plugins by corrupting the user systems when they visited infected websites.

According to the KSN report, when it came to local infection, Kaspersky products detected 13,835,594 local incidents on the user computers in the same period. Worms and file viruses account for the majority of such incidents. In fact, KSN data shows that users are frequently attacked by malware spread via removable USB drives, CDs and DVDs, and other “offline” methods.

“Our report shows that Indian computer users continue to be vulnerable to web threats, social engineering and local threat incidents. The threat landscape is becoming more complex with the increasing use of AI and deepfake. Protection against such attacks not only requires an antivirus solution capable of treating infected objects but also a firewall, anti-rootkit functionality and control over removable devices. In fact, users need to be more vigilant and take comprehensive measures that render them immune to cyberattacks rather than just protect them from threats,” says Jaydeep Singh, General Manager for India Region, Kaspersky.

In terms of online threat sources, KSN has found that 1,979,544 incidents were caused by servers hosted in India in the period July-September 2024. This puts the country at 15th place worldwide.