The use of pirated and counterfeit software products, often exploited to spread malware at a massive scale, can cause substantial productivity and economic losses to manufacturers and businesses, besides posing serious security risks and threats to the critical infrastructure of country, CERT-In Director General Gulshan Rai said on Wednesday.
He was in New Delhi to launch a study titled ‘Piracy and Counterfeit Software: Emerging Risks and Threats to Public Safety and National Security’.
According to the study by independent forensic science lab Truth Labs, 65 per cent of the tested samples of DVDs and PCs with pre-installed software were found affected by one or more malware.
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The study tested a total of 230 samples consisting of 174 samples on DVDs and 56 pre-installed products in laptops collected from 10 geographical locations across the country in collaboration with Microsoft India.
“The majority of the malware identified in the samples enabled remote access and control by hackers followed by backdoors and keylogger which pose a threat to the privacy of the user,” Truth Labs founder chairman Gandhi Kaza said.
Surprisingly, as per the study, 90 per cent of the samples in the form of DVDs gave false positive results in anti-piracy check tests, thereby cheating the user to believe that the installed product was a genuine one.
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“The study indicated that many laptops supplied to government agencies have pre-installed pirated software,” Dr. Gandhi said, adding that malware as a tool of cyber terrorism can even compromise the country’s critical infrastructure, apart from stealing data and denying service to users.
Highlighting the importance of the study, Dr. Rai said hackers keep a tab on the popular free/pirated software made available on the Internet and exploit the vulnerabilities involved.
National Investigation Agency Additional Director General N.R. Wasan said the study was extremely important in creating public awareness. Stating that organised crime had the potential to bring the life to a standstill, Mr. Wasan said built-in malware codes in pirated/free software could compromise banking systems.
Both Dr. Gandhi and Dr. Rai were of opinion that besides creating awareness, it is important to bring down the cost of software in the country to curb piracy.