New Delhi, May 17 (IANS): Nearly one in four Indians faced hacking attacks in the first quarter (January-March period) this year, as malware continues to be a major cyber threat, a report showed on Friday.

In the quarterly data released by global security company Kaspersky, 22.9 per cent of web users in the country were attacked by web-borne threats.

About 20.1 per cent users were vulnerable to local threats during the same period.

"Malware remains a major threat to the users in India. Targeted malware attacks continue to be a major source of worry for organisations and users alike," said the company.

Cyber criminals exploited the vulnerabilities in the browsers and their plugins.

"File-less malware is being seen as the most dangerous web threat this quarter since it does not leave any trace for static analysis of the attack," the findings showed.

Social engineering like phishing, baiting and pretexting also remained a prevalent mode of cyber attack on the Indian users.

Kaspersky said its web security solutions blocked 12,454,797 different Internet-borne cyberthreats during the January-March period.

In the same period, it detected and blocked 16,751,049 local incidents on computers.