‘India high on radar of cyber criminals’

A survey by the software major Symantec Corporation has ranked India to be amongst the first countries in the Asia Pacific Japan region in terms of worms and virus attacks on computers. With growing instances of cyber crimes, Ratnamala Dam Manna, director (security technology and response) at Symantec tells DNA as to where India stands in terms of cyber security threats.

Q: Where does India figure in terms of such attacks?
A:  According to our report, India saw a substantial increase in its proportion of malicious activity in almost every category. India had the fifth highest number of broadband subscribers in the Asia Pacific Japan region in 2008 and the third highest volume of malicious activity, with 10% of the regional total. In fact, India is high on the radar of cyber criminals in almost every type of attack, including spam, phishing, worms and viruses.  The ISTR XIV ranked India first on the worms and viruses attacks prevalence chart in the APJ region. India is also becoming a significant region from where spam originates.

Q: How much of these attacks are happening out of India?
A: Over the past year, Symantec observed a 192% increase in spam detected across the Internet, from 119.6 billion messages in 2007 to 349.6 billion in 2008. India continues to figure among the top countries of spam origin. India ranked third on this list in September.

Q: Any reason for the increase in attacks on India?
A: Growing Internet infrastructure, a burgeoning broadband population and rampant software piracy have made India a top target for attackers. With Indians increasingly going online and making confidential transactions, often unaware of the dangers, users here could be sitting ducks for malware authors.