Phishing attacks via WhatsApp, Telegram high in India

New Delhi: India is among the top three countries facing phishing attacks primarily via instant mobile messaging apps like Facebook-owned WhatsApp and highly-encrypted Telegram, a new report revealed on Wednesday.

The biggest share of detected malicious links between December 2020 and May were sent via WhatsApp (89.6 per cent), followed by Telegram (5.6 per cent), according to data shared by Kaspersky Internet Security for Android, part of the cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab.

Messaging app Viber was in third place with a share of 4.7 per cent and Hangouts had less than one per cent share. Countries experiencing the highest number of phishing attacks were Russia (46 per cent), Brazil (15 per cent) and India (7 per cent).

"Statistics show that phishing in instant messenger apps is still one of the most popular tools among scammers.

This is partly due to the wide popularity of these apps among the audience, as well as the ability to use the built-in functionality of applications to carry out attacks," said Tatyana Shcherbakova, Senior Web Content Analyst at Kaspersky.

In a phishing attack, a cybercriminal sends a fraudulent message designed to trick a human victim into revealing sensitive information to the attacker, or to deploy malicious software on the victim's infrastructure like ransomware.

Sometimes, it can be difficult to determine whether an attack is phishing, as the difference can be just one character or a minor mistake.