Over 42 lakh Indian computers infected with botnet malware

Over 42 lakh computer systems, including mobile phones, were infected in India by June last year with 'botnet' malware being used for various kind of cyber crimes.

As per the data shared by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) with other government departments, the botnet infected systems in the country was 25,915 in 2007 which peaked to about 65 lakh in 2012.

The number of botnet infected system grew rapidly and reached over 60 per cent in first half of 2013.

"The bot infected systems are under control of cyber criminals. The bots steal sensitive information such as online credentials, credit card numbers, email id and passwords etc which cause data loss and financial loss to victims," CERT-in said in on setting up botnet cleaning centre in the country.

The term 'bot' is short for robot. Cyber criminals distribute malicious software that can turn a computer into a bot. These bots can be networked together as 'botnet' that can perform automated tasks over the Internet, without the owners of the devices coming to know about it.

Criminals use botnets to send out spam email messages, spread viruses, attack computers and servers, and commit other kinds of crime and fraud. It also slows down speed of infected computer or mobile phone.

Cyber criminals use Internet to plant malicious software or programmes in a system. In India there are about about 210 million Internet connections which includes both mobile phones and computers. PTI PRS SA 03192003