India ranks third among countries with high number of financial Trojan infections, where cybercriminals defraud customers of online banking services.

• Study was conducted by Symantec.
• The report said India has consistently moved up the rankings for countries with the most number of financial Trojan infections over the last three years (No 7 in 2013; No 5 in 2014; and No 3 in 2015).
• Using financial Trojans to defraud customers of online banking services is still a popular method among cybercriminals looking to make a profit, it added.
• For its research, it extracted configuration files from 656 active malware samples.
• Within those files, it found 2,048 URL patterns that show that the Trojans are targeting customers of 547 organisations in 49 countries.
• The total number of financial Trojan detections continued to decrease in 2015, with a 73 per cent drop compared to the previous year, Symantec added.
• Globally, the financial sector was the highest targeted sector in January with 40.2 per cent of all spear-phishing attacks, it added.
• The report said the primary distribution vector for financial fraud malware is through malicious spam email attachments.
• Symantec said users should exercise caution when receiving unsolicited, unexpected, or suspicious emails or phone calls.
• Users should monitor bank statements regularly for suspicious activity and notify financial institution of any strange behaviour while using their service.

A Trojan horse, or Trojan, in computing is any malicious computer program which misrepresents itself to appear useful, routine, or interesting in order to persuade a victim to install it. The term is derived from the Ancient Greek story of the wooden horse that was used to help Greek troops invade the city of Troy by stealth.