20% Indian users fell victim to cyber threats in the first quarter of 2024, finds study  

Internet users in India continued to fall victims to cyberattacks with nearly a quarter of users, 20%, falling victims to cyber threats in the first quarter of 2024. While nearly 22.9% users were attacked by web-borne threats, 20.1% users were found to be vulnerable to local threats during the same period.

Browsers and social media engineering continued to be the most prevalent forms of web threats, with cyber criminals exploiting vulnerabilities in browsers and their plugins, a study from Kaspersky found.

Additionally, file-less malware in which threat actors make use of legitimate tools to build into a system to perform cyber-attacks. Since these kinds of attacks do not require attackers to trick users into downloading malicious files it became one of the most dangerous forms of web threats during Q1 2024.

Social engineering like phishing, baiting, pretexting were also prevalent mods of cyberattack on Indian users.

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During January-March 2024, 12,454,797 different internet-borne cyberthreats were blocked according to a KSN report.

“Malware remains a major threat to the users in India. Targeted malware attacks continue to be a major source of worry for organisations and users alike. Stealth threats and the exploitation of user vulnerabilities are seen to plague the systems of the users in India”, Purshottam Bhatia, Head of Sales, Consumer Solutions, South Asia, Kaspersky said.