India second worst affected by botnet attacks

Cyber criminals have increased their focus on India. According to Kaspersky, an anti-virus solutions company, 7 per cent of all 45 lakh botnet computers that became victims globally are in India. Though there are no official studies, there were few cases from the country until last year.

Botnet is a network of personal computers that become slaves of rouge virus, giving control to cyber criminals. The virus creeps into PCs when people click booby-trapped websites (porn and pirated-movie sites).

Sitting pretty in some part of the world, hackers get control of data on the hijacked PCs. They can also use these servile computers to launch attacks on other computers. It is very difficult to detect this virus, Kaspersky says.

Those who have developed the virus, TDL, Version 4 of which was launched recently, have done a clever job. “It hides in places that the security software rarely looks in. The botnet is controlled using custom-made encryption,” Mr Sergey Golovanov, a researcher at the Russian anti-virus solutions company, said here in a statement.

The changes introduced in TDL-4 made it the most sophisticated threat today. The owners of TDL are essentially trying to create an indestructible botnet that is protected against attacks, competitors, and anti-virus companies, the researchers added.

The US tops the list with 28 per cent, followed by India at 7 per cent and the UK at 5 per cent.

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