Mumbai, Oct. 7: A new report has indicated that India is among the countries with the highest number of infections with Android devices. ESET Malware Protection & Internet Security T2 2022 Threat Report indicates that India was among the countries where Android/Spy Agent Trojan malware was detected as Android threat detections continued to grow in T2 2022 by 9.5 per cent.

According to the Indian Media, These Trojan agents are malicious files or code that reach a target device undetected, often mixed with another application or disguise and then spy on the target devices, with capabilities that go as far as secretly recording audio and video.

The report adds that the third-party WhatsApp client / GB WhatsApp clone, which provides its users with all the standard WhatsApp features along with some additional benefits, has been responsible for a large part of Android spyware detection in the past four months.

Since the clone app is not available via Google Play Store and is uploaded by most of its users, it carries a number of security risks. Like most APK files, the side file can be easily modified and can contain malware before users download it. Without Play Store protection, these apps with malicious code can easily run across your system once they are installed.

The worst part about the Trojan is that the attacks will not be immediately noticeable, and while the malicious code may spy on you, the daily performance of your phone may not be affected enough to notice the difference. That is why these attacks are not only difficult to identify, but also to get rid of, often requiring a complete hardware reset to clear the malicious code.

The country also ranked second just behind China as the geographic location of the bots that make up the “Mozi” Internet of Things botnet according to the report.

“The largest zombie IoT bots “Mozi” saw a 23% decrease in the number of bots from 500,000 hacked devices in T1 to 383,000 in T2. ​​However, China (53%) and India (35%) continued to have the largest number of IoT bots geographically located objects within the respective countries. These statistics confirm the assumption that the Mozi bots operate on autopilot, operating without human supervision since the arrest of its famous author in 2021,” the report states.