Also known as web robots, these software applications run automatically on the internet and cause infection.
Last year, there were several web-based attacks on thousands of computers throughout the country: many computers were hacked into, malicious codes propagated and spams circulated in large numbers.
However, the worst attack that Mumbai-based internet users faced was infection from bots or botnets.
Bots or botnets, also known as web robots, are basically software applications that can run automatically on the internet. Once a computer gets infected by a bot, it can perform at a much higher speed than humans and the infected computer can be used to send mails or bots to a large number of computers at flash speed.
Leading computer security software manufacturers Symantec in its internet security threat report stated that according to a research survey conducted by them on select computer users, India saw an average of 788 bots per day during 2009.
The reports say that there were around 62,623 distinct bot-infected computers observed in the country. But according to cyber experts, the number could be more than ten times as mentioned in the report.
The other important fact the report revealed is that among all the cities in India where computer and internet is used widely, Mumbai figured at the top with 50% bot-infected computers followed by Delhi with just 13%.
Gaurav Kanwal from Symantec said, “Bot-infected computers are also called Zombie computers which are part of the bot network controlled by the bot masters who are cyber criminals. These infected computers are completely in control of the bot master who leases it out to other people who can use it for spam attacks on several other computers.
Initial investigations will reveal the id address of the Zombie PC which can also be used to send terror emails and send terrorist messages into cyber space. Bot masters are less interested in data of infected computers but are interested in using them to fuel underground economy.”
India has ranked first in sending spam emails into cyber space in the Asia Pacific and Japan region and bot-infection could be the reason for the same, say experts.
The bots can lead to denial of service attacks on a website, web crawling which means going through the web in a very short time, propagate worms and viruses, flooding email accounts with large number of mails and pass wrong or biased information through it for personal or anti-social purposes.
Other than this, bots are also used to buy up or reserve good seats for concerts, stage shows by ticket brokers or ticket booking websites which help them earn goodwill and business.
“In Mumbai, people have broadband connection at their homes and offices. Despite the widepsread use of internet, they do not prefer using security softwares. They are easily lured by weblinks promising some free stuff which later leads to infections,” said an expert working with a leading IT firm.
Experts suggest that the only way to prevent bot infection is to use good quality computer security software and avoid clicking on spam mails or unknown weblinks.
The malicious bots are of various types. Spambots that harvest email addresses from internet forums, contact forms or guestbook pages. Launch downloader programmes suck bandwidth by downloading entire websites and so on.
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