India top in virus trouble

Hyderabad: In a stinging review of India’s continuing troubles with Botnet, global threat intelligence analyst Spamhaus has listed the country on top of a list of ten other countries.

Vietnam comes in second followed by China and the United States is ranked 10. A bot is a type of malware that allows attackers to take control over an affected computer. Bots are also responsible for much of the spam you see around you today. A botnet refers to an active network of computers infected with malware that are used to transmit spam, viruses and conduct other digital crimes.

Last year, the Indian government sanctioned Rs 100 crore to fight the botnet menace. “We are setting up ‘botnet’ cleaning and malware analysis centre within three months. It will automatically detect botnets that trigger various cyber crimes and suggest the device owner to remove it from their device with help of our facility,” IT secretary R.S. Sharma had said at the time.

The project is currently a part of the Digital India programme and aims to create safe and secure cyber space. The centre is being set up with an outlay of about Rs 100 crore and national cyber security watchdog Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (ICERT) has selected vendor for the same.