Centre approves 7 free tools to protect your gadgets from viruses
New Delhi: World Wide Web has been under the constant threat of cybercriminals who are invading the personal lives of users. With the increasing number of malware and phishing attacks, it has become imperative to take eminent steps to ensure Internet safety. For safe Internet experience and to protect your devices from any kind of botnet attacks, the Government of India’s Cyber Swachhta Kendra has approved seven tools.
The Cyber Swachhta Kendra or Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Centre is a part of government’s Digital India initiative under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to create secure cyber space by detecting botnet infections in India and to notify, enable cleaning and securing systems of end-users to prevent further infections. Botnet is infected devices that are connected and they are all operated in a coordinated manner to perform malicious activities.
The centre operates in close coordination and collaboration with Internet Service Providers (ISP) and product/antivirus companies. This centre is being operated by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) under provisions of Section 70B of the Information Technology Act, 2000.
To remove the malware, a user needs to scan his computer/ system/ device with the tools recommend below and take steps to improve the security of the device.
1. Quick Heal Free Bot Removal Tool for Microsoft Windows
This tool comes from Quick Heal in collaboration with CERT-In.
To download the tool, click at https://www.quickheal.co.in/bot-removal-tool
2. Free bot removal tool by eScan Antivirus for Windows PCs
This tool is for Windows PCs and is provided by eScan Antivirus.
To download the tool, click at https://www.escanav.com/en/escanav-cert/escanav-cert-intoolkit.asp
3. eScanAV CERT-In toolkit for Android phones
This toolkit for Android phones comes from eSCan and CERT-In and can be downloaded from the Google Play Store or download it here or click at
https://www.escanav.com/en/escanav-cert/escanav-cert-intoolkit.asp and.
4. USB Pratirodh desktop security solution
USB Pratirodh is a desktop security solution, which controls the usage of removable storage devices like pen drives, external hard drives, cell phones, and other supported USB mass storage devices. You can download it here or click at https://cdac.in/index.aspx?id=cs_eps_usb_pra
5. AppSamvid
AppSamvid is a desktop-based Application Whitelisting solution for Windows operating systems. This solution allows only pre-approved sets of executable files for execution. You can download it here or click at https://cdac.in/index.aspx?id=cs_eps_appsamvid
6. Browser JSGuard for Firefox Web Browser
Browser JSGuard is a browser extension that detects and defends malicious HTML and JavaScript attacks made through the web browser based on Heuristics. It alerts the user the very moment they visit any malicious web pages and provides a detailed analysis threat report of the web page. This just works on the Firefox browser and you can download it here or click at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/browser-jsguard/
7. Browser JSGuard for Google Chrome
For Google Chrome users there is the Browser JSGuard. You can download it from here or click at https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/browserjsguard/ncpkigeklafkopcelcegambndlhkcbhb. This works only for the Chrome browser though.
