Festival season: Its high time for cyber criminals

BANGALORE, INDIA: eCommerce sales in India was $2.84 billion in 2009 and is expected to nearly double to $5.56 billion by 2011. Most of these transitions happen around the festival in November - January when the cyber criminals are waiting to attack the unsuspecting Internet users.

With the holiday season around the corner, spammers are turing their attention from sports entertainment and finance to e-commerce businesses. The logic is  clear: While brick and mortar retailers have long witnessed a shopping boom

during  the festival season, online retailers aren't far behind.

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Says Shantanu Ghosh, vice president, India Product Operations, Symantec, "As always, cybercriminals target the most popular and high-interest subjects to lure victims into revealing their personal information and downloading malware.  The increased focus on India, coupled with upcoming festival and the consequent rise in online shopping, provide the perfect circumstances for cybercriminals to celebrate."

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He added that spam and phishing attacks are getting more targeted and India-specific, as was  witnessed with the recent attacks on the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011, the Katrina  Kaif spoof and the Indian income-tax department.

A MasterCard survey recently revealed that Indians are increasingly taking advantage of  benefits of shopping on the internet and that India would be second only to China in Online shopping turnover by the end of 2010.

Last year, PayPal estimated that 45 per cent Indians were expected to spend more during the festival season than they did in 2008. This year again the percentage will increase and fraudsters are aware of this.

According to the recent Symantec State of Spam and Phishing Report India ranks at number 2 in terms of spam origination, contributing 6 per cent to  the global spam levels. OVerall, spam made up 92.51 per cent of all messages  in August 2010.