Data Theft

New Delhi: News that security firm Kryptowire identified a “backdoor” spyware in Android smartphones in the US which collected sensitive personal data and transmitted it to servers in China has shaken cybersecurity experts in India — a country where one in five smartphones are of Chinese make..The devices actively transmitted user and device information including text messages, contact lists, call history with full telephone numbers, and unique device identifiers to third-party servers in China without user-consent, Kryptowire claimed.

“Nearly 94 per cent of these people are using Android devices and Chinese smartphone users are at roughly 60 million, which means one out of five smartphone users in India is using a ‘Made in China’ device. Thus, security becomes a paramount concern here,” Tarun Pathak, Senior Analyst, Mobile Devices and Ecosystems at New Delhi-based Counterpoint Research, told IANS.
“Indian smartphone users are at the same risk as users in the US when it comes to sensitive personal data and information being copied from phones and transmitted to undisclosed locations without their consent or knowledge. This is owing to the security vulnerabilities that exist in the Android system,” explained Pavan Duggal, one of the nation’s top cyber law experts.

Android is a very fertile platform with a large number of contaminants and infections. Hundreds of thousands of infections have been discovered on the Android platform in the last few years.According to Rahul Tyagi, Vice President (Training) at IT risk assessment and digital security services provider Lucideus, Indian users share the same threat as China continues to be a major exporter of smartphones.”Given the current market, there are a lot of new phone companies/models being launched every day with advanced features at a low price, most of them being manufactured in China — which may put user-privacy at great risk,” Tyagi told IANS.Owing to the competition, companies are trying to give the best hardware experience to consumers but what is lacking is proper security auditing in their custom-operating systems and firmware.
The threat gets bigger with more and more people embracing mobile digital payments in the wake of demonetisation.

“Mobile continues to be an area of exposure. As we get more and more used to transactions with mobile banking or e-commerce, mobile becomes more of a financial gateway and the implications are huge,” added Anand Ramamoorthy, Managing Director, South Asia, Intel Security.”Thus, it is challenging for the Centre/state governments to ward off data stealing from smartphones by third-party software. We need stronger laws to apply enforcement on data stealing via such devices,” he told IANS.
Keeping new-age security needs in mind, steps must be taken to make Indian cyberlaw more effective and redressal mechanisms must be built in for the users who are part of the digital and mobile ecosystem, Duggal added.