Cyber Crime in India: September 2011

28 September 2011

Cyber attack led to IGI shutdown

Three months ago, a ‘technical snag’ had hit operations at the state-of-the-art T3 terminal at Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA). It now turns out it was caused by a “malicious code” sent from a remote location to breach the security at the airport.

A hunt has been launched to nab the perpetrator with the CBI registering a case under the IT Act and IPC. Investigators say that the “malicious code” was in the form of “attack scripts”, which means a programme was written by an expert to exploit the system’s security weakness.

The check-in counters, transfers counters and boarding gates at the IGI are operated using the Common Use Passengers Processing System (CUPPS), maintained by Aeronautical Radio Incorporated (ARINC). The CUPPS operates on a common software-and-hardware platform that integrates all information such as an airline’s reservation system, the expected time of departure and the capacity at waiting lounges. The problem in CUPPS started at 2.30 am on June 29 due to which check-in counters of all airlines at T3 became non-operational.

27 September 2011

Stalker women alarm Punjab cops

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Indian defence cos new target of cyber criminals

New Delhi: Indian defence companies are increasingly becoming target of cyber criminals as they are vulnerable to breaches of cyber security, according to a report by Trend Micro.
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"While this network has managed to compromise a relatively small number of victims, there is a high concentration of defence industry companies among the victims. Moreover, the fact that specific malware components are created for specific victims indicates a level of intentionality among the attackers," Trend Micro Country Manager India and SAARC Amit Nath said.

Read more .....

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Techie held for sending obscene messages to former employer

HYDERABAD: A software professional was arrested on Thursday for sending obscene messages to his former employer and several other senior employees of ICOM, a software company, for allegedly not recognising his work.

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"At one point of time, the management of the company decided to terminate the employees from whose IDs the lewd messages were sent, thinking that they were the culprits. But later it came to know about the mischief deliberately played by someone and approached the police to lodge a complaint," CID superintendent Ram Mohan said.

Read more .....

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Indian Grand Prix: Beware of F1 tickets scam

Delhi: With only one month left for the Formula 1 games to be held in Greater Noida, and youngsters looking for options to grab tickets for the mega event, cyber criminals have started to play foul in order to lure young enthusiasts. Lakshmi Nagar resident Hemant Mehta Agarwal could not believe his luck when he received an SMS which said that Formula 1 organisers had selected his number and that he was eligible to get free tickets to the mega games carnival to be held in Greater Noida. But when he called back on the number to claim his reward, Hemant sensed some foul play and discovered that it was a fraud.

Read more ....

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Two land in trouble for creating bogus FB account

Dimapur | September 23 : Morphing pictures of friends and acquaintances, albeit in jest, has become a popular practice with the advent of computer assisted photo editing software. Such a rage it has become that online networking sites are not complete without people uploading ‘photoshopped’ pictures of themselves as well as other ranging from the outrageously hilarious to the downright offensive. Celebrities and even heads of states are not spared.
This seemingly innocent application has however, landed two youngsters into trouble, big time. For the information of all concerned, cyber offence is a serious crime and are dealt with under the Cyber Act.
It was on September 6 last, the Muslim Council of Dimapur lodged police a complaint citing that some person(s) had misused the nomenclature of the council in the form of creating a bogus Facebook account under its name and uploaded some unpleasant morphed pictures. The account also bore the face of Osama Bin Laden as its profile picture.

Read more .....

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Security Ranks as Top Business Priority for 2012

By SiliconIndia, Tuesday, 27 September 2011

According to the Second Annual Cost of Cyber Crime Study, cyber attacks have a significant financial impact on business and government organizations, despite widespread awareness. ....
The study indicated that though executives are aware of potential security threats, they lack confidence in their organizations risk management practices. Only 35 percent of business and technology leaders were very well defended against security threats. Executives said that complexity of risks has increased over 70 percent and mentioned that the volume and complexity of risks and threats continue to escalate.

Read more...

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Airports in terrorists’ sights?

The cyber crime sleuths of the State’s premier investigating agency - Criminal Investigation Department (CID) - have sought help from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) police to track the whereabouts of an accused who sent a threat e-mail warning of attacks on one of the airports in India. Strangely, the accused has sent the threat e-mail to the official e-mail ID of the cyber crime police station of the CID.
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Read more ....

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Karnataka plans three more cyber crime police stations

MANGALORE, SEPT. 21:

Karnataka will set up three cyber crime police stations in major cities in the State, according to Dr S.M. Jaamdar, Principal Secretary (Home Affairs), Karnataka.

Speaking at the inauguration of M.Sc. in Criminology and Forensic Science at Roshni Nilaya School of Social Work here on Wednesday, he said that the State Government recently received guidelines to set up cyber crime police stations.

Plans are there to open cyber crime police stations in Mangalore, Hubli-Dharwad and Mysore in the first phase

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Hackers preying on shopaholics in festive season

By: Sheetal Sukhija

Date: 2011-09-27

Place: Bangalore

Cyber crime dept sees surge in phishing cases since the onset of the festive season; statistics show around 85 per cent shoppers prefer e-shopping than trudging to malls
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The cyber crime police have recorded an upsurge in the number of phishing and hacking cases happening on these online shopping portals offering merchandise at alluring prices.
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"We are receiving at least 15 complaints of customers being cheated on online shopping portals every week.

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Over 1,000 people registered on the site and paid their fee, but the next day, the site shut down. All the people who had paid huge sum didn't know what to do.

It is best to place your trust only in known brands or names in the online shopping segment," said Rammurthy.

Read more .....

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Expansion plan of Cyber cell caught in red tape

KOZHIKODE: Though e-mail and internet frauds, mobile phone abuses and other cyber crimes are on the rise in the state, the expansion programme of the Cyber Crime Police Station, Thiruvananthapuram, which has jurisdiction all over Kerala, has been caught in red tape.

The proposal was submitted by Anil Kant, IGP, State Crimes Record Bureau, to the Home Department four months ago. However, the department cut down the recommendation of posting 37 officers in the station to 16 and submitted to the Finance Department. It is learnt that the Finance Department had objected the proposal of creating new posts and returned the same to Home Department citing financial constraints

Read more .....

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Special wing to combat cyber crimes: Ashoka

TNN | Sep 27, 2011,
BIJAPUR: Home minister R Ashoka said on Monday that with a view to curb increasing cyber crimes in the state, a special wing will be constituted....
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The home minister further said that the government has also decided to expand the activity of the command platoon and special squad at the divisional level to detect cyber crimes faster.
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Read more ....

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A veterinarian who is busy cracking cyber crimes in Pune

By Chaitraly Deshmukh |

Meet the new deputy commissioner of police heading the cyber crime cell, economic offences wing (EOW) and the anti-narcotics cell, Sanjay Shinde. He hails from Sangli and initially worked as a veterinarian in the state animal husbandry department. But in 1990, he cleared the Maharashtra Public Service Commission examination .....
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How does the department tackle such crimes?
Cracking cyber crimes or economic offences are unlike routine ones. Such crimes are committed by the suspects who are well-versed in computers or seek help of experts.

Many of the suspects committing cyber crimes are well-educated and have an IT background. We have a well-trained staff that has enormous knowledge in tackling such cases. We also seek help from experts. Furthermore, internship programme involving college students too is helping us in solving some of the cyber crime cases.

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Read more ....

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Growing web of stalker women alarm Punjab cops

Abhijit Prashar, TNN | Sep 27, 2011, 01.41AM IST

MOHALI: Spurned lovers taking to cyber crime to take revenge is quite common but women taking centre stage in such malicious attempts has alarmed experts at Punjab state cyber crime branch. They have received at least three complaints over the last two weeks of women stalking, harassing and maligning men, with whom they were in a relationship at some point in time.

The three young women, accused in separate cases, had come from different cities of Punjab to Chandigarh for jobs. The common factor in all the cases is the element of rejection that pushed these women into cyber crime. "In one of the cases, the complainant told us that he got friendly with a young woman at his workplace in December 2010. Then for some reasons, they parted ways on mutual terms in July this year and since then he has been receiving threatening e-mails. He still had no clue that the woman he knew was behind this till he got an expert to match IP addresses," said state crime branch SSP Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh.

He said in another case, a young man was involved with a young woman for the past many years. Then they parted ways as both wanted to get married to someone else. Later, the young woman started sending threatening e-mails to the young man and that is when he approached them.

Speaking to TOI, the SSP said, "Over the last few weeks, we have come across cases which involve women in their 20s and 30s taking to cyber crime against a man they knew. If every three months we receive around 10 cases, then at least one of them involves a young woman. Lack of patience and supervision by a family elder are the chief factors behind such trend."

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26 September 2011

SMS, email won't get you to Indian Grand Prix Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/sms-email-wont-get-you-to-indian-grand-prix-136266&cp

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23 September 2011

Cybercriminals Tapping Kids for Hacking

September 23, 2011 3:44 PM EST
Hackers are now luring children into kiddie online games rigged with malware to infect computers with data-stealing Trojans. Parents are urged to be more vigilant to advise children not to download too much games especially from untrusted sites.

Websites offering fun games like "spot the difference," "color an object" or virtual pets tempt children to play and unknowingly deliver malware and spyware into their parents' computer to steal financial data or take control of the computer for use in other cybercriminal activities, according to computer security maker BitDefender.

Targeting children have become a modus for hackers because they can be easily drawn to online educational and fun games and because more children are using the Internet without parental supervision.

"Kids are more easily tempted into clicking on that big green download button or flashing icon in hopes of having more fun. A four-year-old, obviously, isn't worried about online banking vulnerabilities," said Catalin Cosoi, head of online threats lab at BitDefender, according to Officialwire.com.

Cybercriminals also have a good reason in picking kids for their online shenanigans as the number of very young online users are growing.

In a survey, BitDefender found out that 46.6 percent of children in the U.S. and the U.K. have their own social network accounts.
The same survey conducted on 1,649 adults between April 12 and July 10 showed that 24.7 percent of adults surveyed don't monitor their kids' online activities. More than 44.3 percent of surveyed adults said their children had accessed sites that they shouldn't have.
Some precautions adults can take to keep kids out of the reach of cybercriminals are giving children limited account and access to a computer and anti-virus.

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Two held for sending obscene mails

Hyderabad | Posted on Sep 23, 2011 at 11:11am IST

HYDERABAD: The Cyber Crime police arrested two software engineers who were involved in two different offences of sending obscene emails containing pornographic images. According to Cyber Crime police, a woman working in a private firm lodged a complaint on August 25 about receiving obscene emails with pornographic images along with other female employees. After analysing the case technically, based on IP log and subsequent enduser details, it came to light the accused Vemuri Ravi Kumar was involved in sending obscene mails to a woman employee and arrested by police recently. On interrogation, he confessed he had again sent obscene emails from his computer system installed at his office. The accused confessed he was an exemployee of the victim's company and due to nonrecognition of his hard work, he transmitted the obscene and defamatory emails to the employees. Police recovered one computer and pen drive. In another case, a software engineer was nabbed by Cyber Crime police involved in sending abusive mails to a married woman. The victim had lodged a complaint with on September 7 about receiving emails with abusive content and which defamed the character of her sister. Based on IP log and subsequent enduser details, the accused Muqthadir Ahmed was arrested. On interrogation, he confessed he had sent the abusive emails defaming the woman from his computer system installed at his residence. The accused confessed he had developed friendship with the sister of the victim and tried to get into a relationship. With the woman rejecting his marriage proposals, he sent abusive and defamatory emails to her brotherinlaw, defaming the character of her sister.

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22 September 2011

Cyber underworld: How it works

Omkar Sapre, ET Bureau | Sep 22, 2011, 11.14AM IST

PUNE: Development kits, IT support, outsourced development and tech updates are normally indicators of a mature, corporatised economy. These have, however, become best practices being adopted by the underground cyber world today.

Cyber attacks are no longer mere statements or bragging tools. They have a clear agenda and targets and can siphon off huge amount of data or stall entire systems. And this shift has taken place even as the profiles, styles and motives of attackers have undergone a sea change too.

Read more.....

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Indian defence companies become new target of cyber criminals:Report

21 Sep, 2011, 07.42PM IST, PTI

NEW DELHI: Indian defence companies are increasingly becoming target of cyber criminals as they are vulnerable to breaches of cyber security, according to a report by Trend Micro.

The attacks by criminals in the cyber space are aimed to infect the e-mail addresses as well as the systems.

The report said that cyber criminals send out emails with PDF attachments to companies. Once infected it is very difficult to remove the malicious content from the systems or to detect on what amount of data is being used under such circumstances.

It further said that attack is being done on the Indian defence firms from the past few weeks and was started in the month of July this year.

Apart from India, defence firms in the USA, Japan, Israel have also fallen victim to criminals operating in cyber space.

According to an estimate, cyber crime is an underground economy that is estimated at over USD 100 billion (annually) worldwide.

"In total, the attackers compromised 32 computers; however, there were multiple compromises at several locations. This network has been active since July, 2011 and is continuing to send out malicious documents in an attempt to compromise additional targets.

"While this network has managed to compromise a relatively small number of victims, there is a high concentration of defence industry companies among the victims. Moreover, the fact that specific malware components are created for specific victims indicates a level of intentionality among the attackers," Trend Micro Country Manager India and SAARC Amit Nath said.

Trend Micro is a global leader in network anti-virus and internet content security software and services.

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21 September 2011

How safe are your computer passwords?

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Remembering several complicated passwords can make it hard logging into your accounts. But make those passwords too easy and you could become a victim of computer hackers. Here are some tips for keeping your information secure.

Here are two passwords. Try to figure out which one is harder for a hacker to crack.

First, one with a combination of letters and symbols: "%$#@(8ks98"

Another starts with the word "dog," but with a capital "D," the numeral zero for the "o," and several periods after the "g": "D0g..........."

Believe it or not, the second is more difficult, and here's why.

"Making the password longer slows down their ability to figure out what the password is, and length matters more than complexity," says Steve Gibson, a computer-hacking expert.

Because every password is like a needle in a haystack, Gibson came up with something he calls a "haystack calculator." It's a website that can show you immediately how easy or how hard it is to crack your password.

Unfortunately people like to use simple passwords so they can remember them. The most-common password is "123456." The word "password" is also near the top of the list, and so is the phrase "iloveyou." They are so common that hackers put them into a dictionary of passwords.

So Gibson says you need to make the haystack as big as possible to really hide the needle.

Gibson's calculator shows how longer passwords make the haystack bigger.

He demonstrates by adding one character at a time.

"We can see that the length of time required is increasing very quickly, to the point that in the worst case: 38 centuries," said Gibson.

Before the password is hacked. In other words you don't have to make the password so complicated you can't remember it. Just add more characters.

"And it doesn't matter what they are. They could just be colons. Or come up with something like your own personal secret, and you add that to your password and it makes it vastly stronger," said Gibson.

But the safest passwords will have:

At least one letter in upper case
Another one in lower case
There will be at least one digit
And one symbol
12 characters long is optimum

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20 September 2011

Pakistan threatens to block Google

Pakistan has threatened to block Google as its administrator was not helping the country's premier investigating agency in nabbing people involved in cyber crime.
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If Google did not help FIA in future then a case would be registered against it, the minister said and warned that Google could be blocked in Pakistan for not cooperating.

Read more....

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6,600 constables to be inducted into Delhi Police

Delhi Police will have more than 83,000 personnel to carry out policing jobs in the capital from tomorrow when over 6,600 constables, including 460 women, will be inducted into the force, which is the largest induction at one go.

Of the 6,608 new entrants, 685 will undergo advanced commando training with CRPF in Neemech in Maharashtra and BSF in Tekhenpur in Madhya Pradesh. All the constables being inducted have undergone preliminary commando training.

With this, a senior police personnel said, the total number of personnel in the force will rise to 83,762. “The fresh inductions will ease pressure on police. They will be used for policing on the ground level.

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The personnel were given training in crime investigation, forensic analysis, cyber crime and economic offences besides in law and other subjects, the official said.

Read more ...

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Updated: Pakistan To Block Facebook? India’s IT Act And Blasphemy

Update: In a recent tweet, Nighat Dad mentions that the Court orders do not point towards a ban on Facebook and that she intends to upload the Court Orders. We will update the post as we get more information.
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ndia’s Proposed Internet Rules & Blasphemy
MediaNama readers should be aware that India’s finalized Internet Control Rules also prohibit users from hosting or uploading anything blasphemous, although India doesn’t even have a blasphemy law.
The rules if enforced to the letter, then a similar situation can arise in India, since different groups can write to ISPs alleging that certain content is blasphemous, in their opinion. ISPs, not wanting to lose their safe harbor, might just comply with the complaints and block access.

Read more ....

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HP judiciary, probe officers to learn IT to curb cyber crime

Suresh Sharma, TNN Sep 1

MANALI: Unfamiliar with the latest technologies, the investigation agencies and judicial system of the state have not been able to curb the menace of cyber crime. But not any more. Police, investigation agencies, judiciary and forensic experts of the state are set to be updated with various facets of latest information technology.

With revolution in information technology, the menace of cyber crime is not confined to the cities; it is increasingly growing in the small towns and villages of the state. Cases of cyber crimes are doubling every year. Given the need of hour, top police officials, forensic science and judicial officers are determined to modernize themselves. Modernization of investigation agencies is also under consideration.

Justice Kuldeep of the Himachal Pradesh high court said the size and types of cyber crimes are increasing continuously and our departments and agencies should be apprised of emerging trends in cyber crimes. "Courts will record a significant increase in number of cases under cyber crimes in coming days. Familiarity with those tricks, latest technologies and gadgets is the only way to rein in these crimes," he said.

He further added that the HP high court and the Himachal judicial academy are working hard in this regard and judicial officers, police, forensic experts and prosecution officers from different districts of the state are sharing their views to curb cyber crimes from its root.

Justice VK Ahuja said not only police and investigation agencies, but judicial officials too will have to be aware of the latest technology and trends.

Usually cyber crimes are committed by using computer as a tool or a target or both, but availability of mobiles even in far-flung areas with latest technology and internet connectivity, cyber crime is a serious issue which could be committed from distant places. The IT Act 2000 was amended in 2008 and mobile phones and other electronic gadgets were brought under the purview of this act.

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