New Delhi, Sep 9 (IANS): India has emerged as the top targeted nation by data-stealing malware to hijack business transactions and steal information from small and medium sized businesses, a report says.

The report by software security major Trend Micro says India, which faced 16 percent of the total attacks, is followed by Egypt and Iran at 11 percent each. Pakistan, Taiwan and the US take the third spot with seven percent.

"In the second quarter, we saw a shift in the threat landscape with cyber criminals becoming more sophisticated and creative, amplifying existing methods of attack, and using them in new ways," said Myla V. Pilao, director of TrendLabs marketing communications under Trend Micro.

"... the potential damage caused by cyber attacks extends far beyond a simple software bug to hacks of airplanes, smart cars and television stations," he said.

According to the report, the total number of malware detections across the Asia Pacific region in the second quarter of 2015 was at nearly 118 million.

While the software major recorded 396 million spam messages in the same region, hits to malicious URLs from users reached 214 million.