law: Information Technology Act, 2000
  43. Penalty for damage to computer, computer
  
  system, etc.- 
  If any person without permission of the owner
  
  or any other person who is incharge of a computer, computer system or computer
  
  network,- accesses or secures access to such computer, computer system or
  
  computer network downloads, copies or extracts any data, computer data base
  
  information from such computer, computer system or computer network including
  
  information or data held or stored in any removable storage medium.
  Introduces or causes to be introduced any
  
  computer contaminant or computer virus into any computer, computer system or
  
  computer network;
  damages or causes to be damaged and computer,
  
  computer system or computer network, data, computer database or any other
  
  programmes residing in such computer, computer system or computer network;
  disrupts or causes disruption of any computer,
  
  computer system or computer network;
  denies or causes the denial of access to any
  
  person authorized to access any computer, computer system or computer network
  
  by any means;
  provides any assistance to any person to
  
  facilitate access to a computer, computer system or computer network in
  
  contravention of the provisions of this Act, rules or regulations made
  
  thereunder;
  charges the services availed of by a person to
  
  the account of another person by tampering with or manipulating any computer,
  
  computer system or compute network he shall be liable to pay damages by way of
  
  compensation not exceeding one crore rupees to the person so affected.
  Explanation.- For the purposes of
  
  this section.- 
  (i) "computer contaminant" means any
  
  set of computer instructions that are designed –
  (a) to modify,
  
  destroy, record, transmit date or programme residing within a computer,
  
  computer system or computer network; or
  (b) by any means to
  
  usurp the normal operation of the computer, compute system, or computer
  
  network;
  (ii) "computer database" means a
  
  representation of information, knowledge, facts, concepts or instructions in
  
  text, image, audio, video that are being prepared or have been prepare in a
  
  formalized manner or have been produced by a computer, computer system or
  
  computer network and are intended for use in a computer, computer system or
  
  computer network;
  (iii) "computer virus" means any
  
  computer instruction, information, data or programme that destroys, damages,
  
  degrades adversely affects the performance of a computer resources or attaches
  
  itself to another itself to another computer resources and operates when a
  
  programme, date or instruction is executed or some other even takes place in
  
  that computer resource;
  (iv) "damage" means to destroy,
  
  alter, delete, add, modify or re-arrange any computer resource by any means.