Cyber Swachhta Kendra

The "Cyber Swachhta Kendra" (Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Centre) is a part of the Government of India's Digital India initiative under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to create a secure cyber space by detecting botnet infections in India and to notify, enable cleaning and securing systems of end users so as to prevent further infections.

The "Cyber Swachhta Kendra" (Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Centre) is being operated by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) for analyzing BOTs/malware characteristics and providing information and enabling citizens for removal of BOTs/malware. In addition, "Cyber Swachhta Kendra" will strive to create awareness among citizens to secure their data, computers, mobile phones and devices such as home routers.

Collaborative Partners

The "Cyber Swachhta Kendra" collaborates with Department of Telecommunications, Internet Service Providers, Antivirus companies and academia to detect systems infected by bots and notify the end users regarding infection of their system and providing them assistance to clean their systems.

Reporting incidents to "Cyber Swachhta Kendra"

All users, system administrators can report incidents to “Cyber Swachhta Kendra” (Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Centre) at CERT-In help desk regarding the malicious behavior on their systems / networks along with sufficient logs for analyzing the incident and providing requisite support. Cyber Swachhta Kendra will provide the services free-of-cost.

If the user witness any unusual behavior such as an unknown communication sent by the system, unidentified data consumption, self-installed application/software, etc. the computer / device should be scanned immediately with AntiVirus Scanners or Rescue disks provided freely or commercially by different antivirus vendors to detect malware/botnet infections.

How are the users alerted ?

A User's computer may be infected by a bot (a software that is capable of compromising the victims’ machine and using it for further malicious activities) and may connect to malicious servers, without his / her knowledge or consent. Cyber security companies, Law Enforcement agencies and Computer Emergency Response Teams, trace such activity while analyzing or investigating such malicious servers. Based on such analysis, it is suspected that a User's IP address may be infected with specific bot/malware.

“Cyber Swachhta Kendra” (Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Centre) sends an alert to the ISPs, specifying the IP addresses of infected systems which are part of botnet and are performing malicious activities. ISPs then reach out to the owner(s) of infected system(s) with the help of registered IP address.

A removal tool can be used by the user in order to detect and clean certain Bots/malware which are residing on the infected machine. Such tools enable users to run a scan of the machine against the antivirus signatures in an automated manner to detect the malwares on scanned machine and remove the malware.

Source : Cyber Swachhta Kendra

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