Mumbai tops bot list, your computer's under threat

Mumbai: Be afraid - especially if you live in Mumbai. If the results of a survey conducted by an IT security company are to be believed, Internet users in the city are India's most compromised users, and the country itself now ranks as the top generator of spam in the Asia Pacific region.

Mumbai has the most bot-infected computers - nearly 50 per cent of the national total, while Delhi accounts for 13 per cent. While this may sound harmless, the cases of Khalsa College's Ken Haywood and Chembur's Sarika Kamath could convince you otherwise.

Terrorists used WiFi connections of Matunga's Khalsa College, and American expat Ken Haywood, a resident of Sanpada, and Sarika Kamath, to send out terror mails that were later traced back to them.

What is a bot?
"A bot-infected system is like a zombie PC. It will use your system while it's running or even when it's not, to generate spam mails that can be traced back to your system. While a majority of this activity is income-driven, it could also be used for terror activity or government propaganda," said David Freer, vice president, consumer business, Symantec, which conducted the Internet Security Threat Report across eight cities in India.

Number crunching
With regard to online security threats, India moved up from number 11 to number 5 on the most attacked country 2010 list. It ranks behind USA, China, Brazil and Germany, in that order.

• Email login and password sells for $15 (Rs 667), a credit card along with CVM number sells for a dollar (Rs 44)
• Mumbai 50% of bot-infected computers. Delhi 13%, Hyderabad 17%, Bangalore 6%, Cochin 5%, Chennai 4%, Pune 3%