Hyderabad: Hyderabad was the second most malicious city in the country in 2014, according to a report by F-secure labs. The malicious city in this context denotes a city with rampant use of malware.

Use of malware, especially banking-related malware has been topmost in India. Also, Android-based mobile malwares are capable of collecting API key, application ID, carrier, device manufacturer, device model details, GPS location, International Mobile Equipment Identity number, network operator, package name and SDK version from devices.

Hyderabad has been rated second, after Delhi, and is followed by Chennai and Chandigarh as the top malicious cities in the country.

On the mobile front, premium rate SMS is still the number one reason behind a high number of SMS-related malware on the Android platform and Mumbai, Delhi, Chandigarh, Chennai and Gurgaon were the top “mobile infected” cities in the country.

The report affirms the rise of malware infections in the country and also points out that the top malware infection in the country is Botnet related. Botnet is a collection of Internet-connected programmes communicating with other similar programmes in order to perform.

“Hackers manage to own your PCs and use them for spamming, DDOS (type of denial of service attack) or other malicious activity to make substantial amount of money. Banking related malware has been consistently topping the chart in India. The ‘Ramnit’ malware steals bank users’ names and passwords and it mostly spreads through USB removable drives. Furthermore, PCs in India are moving away from Windows XP. What was also observed was the decline in Downadup, Conficker infection over the past three years in India,” said the report.