The Russian leader Joseph Stalin had once said that the death of one man is a tragedy whereas the death of millions is a statistic. A similar allegory could be the fact that one in every 30 emails, which bombard inboxes in Indian cyberspace, is infected with a virus. The revelation made by a study conducted by MessageLabs, a web security services company puts India right on top of the heap of nations, which have been affected by a flurry of virus activity in the month of January. While the global ratio of viruses in emails turned out to be one in every 131 mails, what's even more staggering is the spam ratio - one in every 1.36 mails is junk mail. One of the reasons for the increase in the number of viruses in the country could be the rampant piracy of software.
Speaking about the continuing trend, ML Srinivasan, Technical director, Secure Matrix Solutions, an Internet security firm, says, "The usage of legally purchased software is extremely low in India roughly 60 to 70 per cent of the software installed on Indian PCs is pirated. And they are easily available at roadside shops. In most cases, the software CD is infected by viruses, which are embedded in Key Generators or Crack programmes which help end users bypass the software registration process." Another reason for the spread of viruses is a lack of updated anti-virus signatures among those who own anti-virus packages.
