Shopper Malware: 14% Indians affected

A new Trojan called Shopper malware is increasing its presence among smart phone users. The malware is screening unsolicited ads and flashing fake reviews.

Highlights

The malware is now focusing on retail applications. The malware is capable of reading data being entered on the screen. As the trojan gains permission, it interacts with the system interfaces and captures every data being featured in the screen. After acquiring information, it is using google and Facebook data to register on popular shopping sites.

Earlier Malware encounters

Prior to Shopper Malware, the largest such infection was created by “Trojan-Dropper”.  This was between October 2019 to November 2019. It affected 14.23% of Indians. Russia was the most affected. Around 28.46% of Russians were infected due to the malware.

With these increasing cyber-crimes, Indian Government has set up Cyber Swachhta Kendra to detect such malware infections and clean them at the earliest.

Cyber Swachhta Kendra

The CSK are Botnet cleaning and Malware analysis centres. They operate under Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) under Ministry of Electronics and information Technology. They were established in accordance with National Cyber Security Policy. The Centre provides malware removal tools to fix them permanently. It is important to develop more such centres as India ranks third in list of countries with highest number of cyber threats.

Month: Current Affairs - January, 2020