India is in a state of denial on cyber security: Kamlesh Bajaj

Kamlesh Bajaj, former government servant and now CEO of the Data Security Council of India (DSCI), tells Aditi Phadnis that India must beware another attack on its cyber security and suggests ways in which this can be countered.
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Online impostor held for harassing woman

A Najibabad resident has been arrested for harassing a woman on social networking sites, threatening her and blackmailing her family after befriending her under a fake ID on Facebook and Orkut.
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Karunakaran said the woman started avoiding Akram on learning he was an impostor but he pestered her to marry him. When she refused, he made fake profiles of her on these sites and posted false and offensive information, even disclosing the woman's mobile number. Thereafter, he informed the woman's mother and other relatives about the profile through electronic means. He met the mother and blackmailed her to pay Rs 5 lakh, if she did not want the complainant to be disgraced or become the victim of an acid or blade attack.
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India to widen scope of cyber-security coordinator

India is to widen the scope of its cyber-security coordinator in the wake of incendiary Internet data that swept the country earlier this month and forced an exodus of northeastern people from Pune and Bangalore, although a senior official said that there is no move to take up the issue with Pakistan.

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India has also reiterated a demand made three years ago to toughen cyber laws to prevent such hate campaigns, the official said.

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India to appoint a cyber security controller in National Security Council

Waking up to the new threat of cyber jehad, India has decided to appoint a cyber security controller in the National Security Council.

Official sources confirmed that the recent incident of morphed images being uploaded on a mass scale to create panic in parts of India; has got the Indian Government in a situation where it has to learn on the job.

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NTRO was missing from govt's initial bid to block inflammatory web content

As the security establishment was scrambling to contain fake and inflammatory messages spreading across the internet that contributed to violence and exodus of thousands, one agency was conspicuous by its absence in the crucial initial phase: the intelligence agency that is supposed to counter such cyber crises.

In a bizarre twist to the government's response earlier this month to contain India's first real cyber challenge, the National Technical Research Organization (NTRO) was completely absent from the operation in the initial phase.
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On August 14, the Centre had issued a nation-wide alert about safety of northeast origin people, and by August 17, it had imposed stiff restrictions on SMSs and MMSs over mobile phones. On August 18, the home ministry had forwarded the first list of internet sites and URLs to be blocked.

There were 75 websites and URLs on the first list given to CERT-IN (Computer Emergency Response Team-India) for blocking. Almost all of them were identified by the Intelligence Bureau and some probably by the Research and Analysis Wing. Not one of them was provided by NTRO.
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The absence of NTRO in the critical initial phase fits into the larger lack of clarity within the security establishment over countering inflammatory messages on the web. The initial rush to block websites and Twitter handles led to widespread uproar against India's intolerance towards internet freedom.
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Power grids easy meat for cyber rogues

NEW DELHI: India's power systems could be vulnerable to crippling cyber attacks on a scale that can have serious implications for national security and economy, an enquiry into the July 30-31 grid collapse that grabbed global attention has said.

Although cyber attacks have been ruled out in last month's grid collapse, destabilization of the energy sector could lead to a "cascading effect on national security and economy. It points out that main vulnerabilities are in transmission and distribution sectors.
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A well-delivered cyber assault can disrupt services to critical users like hospitals and metro rail systems and such an attack may choose to target distribution where the bulk of automation is evident.
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Winning Cyber Battles Without Fighting

In military operations, good leaders never make a move without the best available intelligence and a strong sense of situational awareness. To do otherwise is tantamount to flying blind, something a good pilot or business leader should avoid.

Unfortunately, too many leaders of industry and commerce seem to be flying blind in today’s cyber domain.

“The Cyber-readiness Reality Check,” an independent survey recently commissioned by the company, CounterTack, Inc., reveals that more than one-third of cyber security executives at companies with revenues greater than $100 million are unable to see an attack once it finds its way inside the perimeter of their systems.

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The problem is exacerbated when senior leadership defers to the IT department in all matters pertaining to information security. “That’s our CIO’s responsibility,” is a comment often heard when speaking with senior and chief executives about cyber defense.

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While IT security departments certainly must bear responsibility, the executive leader at the top of any organization should understand and take ownership of the problem if security is to have a fighting chance of attaining the resources needed for effective self-defense.

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Pakistan plans bigger cyber attack?

A highly-classified government report on the recent incident of what has been described as the worst cyber attack on the country has said that it should not be treated as an 'isolated incident' as this exercise was not merely aimed at spreading communal hatred, but also to test the effectiveness of network of 'modules and sleeper cells' of subversive outfits in states like Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Kerala.

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Outfits like the Jamaat-e-Islami, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, Simi and Indian Mujahideen are already on the watch list of intelligence agencies for spreading communally-sensitive messages and pictures that triggered a massive exodus of people from the Northeast.

Intelligence agencies in their report have warned that outfits like HuJI, Indian Mujahideen, Simi and even the PFI have a formidable network in southern India and have 'increased their support base manifold' in the last few yeas in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.

Thus, the report adds, this incident should be treated as a warning signal to sensitise security agencies to launch a massive offensive against these groups in the affected states.

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Targeted cyber attacks aimed at critical infrastructure

The trend we’ve seen until now is that targeted attacks use customised malware and refined targeted social engineering to gain unauthorised access to sensitive information. However, cyber criminals are increasingly targeting critical sectors including energy for mass destruction, say industry players.
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Symantec has identified a new series of targeted attacks, dubbed the Shamoon attacks, where critical infrastructure including power is coming under threat. According to the global security service provider’s July 2012 intelligence report, during the first half of the year, the total number of daily targeted attacks continued to increase at a minimum rate of 24 per cent with an average of 151 threats being blocked each day during May and June.

The report also states that globally the defence industry has been the biggest target in the first half of the year, with an average of 7.3 attacks per day.

India may not be immune to the global trend. After all, we became the top spam-sending nation during the first quarter of 2012. The country contributed to about 20 per cent of the globe’s total spam volume followed by Indonesia (13 per cent), South Korea (12 per cent), and Russia (10 per cent).
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Cyber criminals are abandoning spam emails only to resort to other more lucrative means such as targeted attacks.
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Balance Internet freedom with national security: US to India

The United States advised India to ensure Internet freedom while seeking to preserve national security, as the Indian government asked social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter to check pages carrying inflammatory messages.

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The general principle of respect for freedom of expression, respect for the unique characteristics of the online environment, needs to be respected, even as they work through whether there are things these companies can do to help calm the environment..........

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Living with the reality of virtual threats

The recent revelations of Pakistan-based websites unleashing doctored pictures of alleged atrocities against Muslims in order to inflame passions in India has once again drawn attention to the enormous potential of the Information Age to challenge our security assumptions.

The computer is the instrument of our age; cyberspace is the oxygen of the internet. So much in our interconnected, globalised, and technologically advancing world depends on cyberspace.

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To a layman, cyber security means simple things: a password that is not stolen, a message that remains confidential, a child that is not exposed to a stalker or paedophile online. When they type in a web address, that is where they should go and not to a spam site. When they click a link that looks genuine, they should not be cheated by a plausible fraud. Their work online should not be tampered with, and so on……………..

THREATS to cyberspace

The international relations theorist Joseph Nye has discerned four different types of threats to cyberspace. The most dramatic is Cyber War — the unauthorised invasion by a government into the systems or networks of another, aiming to disrupt those systems, to damage them partially, or to destroy them entirely.

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Second threat is Cyber Espionage. Governments can invade the systems of their rivals to steal sensitive information that would be useful for their own purposes. These attacks are usually hard to discover and the case of Operation Shady RAT, the world’s biggest hacking ever, is rather phenomenal.

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Cyber Crime is the third kind of threat, and the most familiar. While this also has military and political implications, it affects the lives of ordinary Internet users more closely………………...

Cyber Crime also includes pornography, Internet stalking, and personality imitation.

Finally there is Cyber Terrorism. This includes websites spreading extremist propaganda, recruiting terrorists, planning attacks, and otherwise promoting terrorists’ political and social objectives………

Social networking websites are also increasingly becoming targets, not only because of the massive databases they provide, but also in order to spread malware that infect computers. On Facebook there are 50 million Indian users and even if a small fraction of them click unsuspectingly on a malevolent but seemingly ordinary link, you have that many computers opened up to risk and infection.

Another use of social networks, seen recently in India, is to spread inflammatory material with a motivated agenda, such as the doctored pictures of alleged atrocities against Muslims in Assam and Myanmar that incited violence in Mumbai and threats of retaliation elsewhere. Though this does not constitute cyber terrorism in itself, it constitutes a new security threat that cannot be ignored.

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India’s own style of dealing with cyber threats leaves much to be desired. It is relatively chaotic and there is a constant insecurity that our cyber-defences are insufficient.

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21-year-old Goan kills himself after MMS clip goes viral

A 21-year-old in Goa has killed himself after an MMS that featured him with his girlfriend went viral.

The police says that Arjun Mainkar from a village in North Goa, hanged himself on August 5 . His suicide note says that his girlfriend's family had allegedly threatened to harm his sister as revenge for the MMS.
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After the MMS was allegedly shot by Arjun, his family as well as his girlfriend's had decided that the couple should get married.

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‘Govt’s Internet crackdown needs to be transparent’

As the government cracks down on websites and social networks that it says are responsible for posting inflammatory and hateful content that led to a mass exodus of people from North-eastern states from south Indian cities, online activists are decrying the lack of transparency with which the government is blocking websites and content.

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“The debate on social media diverts the attention from the issue at hand. While the spotlight is on the role of Twitter,Facebook, SMS and MMS in making people flee Bangalore, there is hardly any discussion on the socio-economic conditions of north-eastern people living in South India. Social media solely cannot be blamed for the events in Britain, Arab or India, said Commander Mukesh Saini (retired), a cyber security expert.

“Misinformation on social media itself cannot become into a monster unless supplemented with some real world information”, he said.

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Will work with social media to prevent misuse of technology: Sibal

Admitting to difficulties in identifying people using websites to spread communal hatred, the government today said it was working with social networking sites to create an institutional mechanism to prevent misuse of technology.

Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said some social networking websites have agreed to share user information with the government but there were some procedural issues involved.

 “We have to make efforts in consultation with the websites and impress upon them to create an institutional mechanism to prevent misuse of technology. If there was misuse of technology there should be provision for punishment, Sibal said adding no such provisions were available at present.”

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With social media curbs, govt is barking up the wrong tree

The most striking thing about the government’s latest efforts to clamp down on social media platforms and block websites, ostensibly to spike rumour-mongering of the sorts we saw last week, is the extent to which it has the enthusiastic support of many in the mainstream media.

The government has thus far blocked 254 websites on the grounds that they bore inflammatory messages that contributed to the fear psychosis among people from the north-east and triggered their ‘exodus’ from some of India’s cities.

The government has additionally threatened to take legal action against Twitter, evidently because it has “refused to cooperate” in the crackdown on web sites with inflammatory messages. Facebook and YouTube are, on the other hand, cooperating with the government and, according to the Telecom Secretary, have validated the government’s claim that many of these inflammatory messages were uploaded from Pakistan.

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Yet, in attempting to clamp down on social media platforms like Twitter, the government may be resorting too readily to the censorship instinct, and worse channelling its energies in entirely the wrong direction. In this particular instance, it may be barking up the wrong tree.

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4 held for sending provocative SMS

The cyber crime cell of the Pune police arrested four men late on Monday night for allegedly circulating provocative SMSs in the city regarding the violence in Burma that led to attacks on students from the northeast in the city last week.
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The SMS and a doctored MMS purportedly about the violence in Burma are suspected to have triggered a string of attacks on people from northeast living in the city, forcing many to leave for their home states.
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Do Indian Enterprises have Legal Remedies for Cyber Crime?

Enterprises in India are in the forefront when it comes to offering cloud and mobile apps to their employees in online banking, retail, manufacturing and many other sectors. However, these companies are profoundly unprepared and mostly unaware of the mobile app threats lurking in app stores. These enterprises are also victims of large data thefts and various other cyber crimes. However, most of them are left with the only option of revamping their IT systems, and hardly any of them take up the matter legally. The million-dollar question is — does our country have a proper legal framework to assist enterprises against cyber crime.
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Centre, Twitter in face-off over PMO parody accounts

The government and popular social media site Twitter are locked in a confrontation over half-a-dozen accounts that the Centre feels "misrepresent" the Prime Minister's Office but which the web-based platform has so far refused to shut down.

The clash over the accounts is playing out at a time when the government has also asked social media to remove sites posting incendiary and untrue information on the Assam riots and its fallout. On this count, too, Twitter hosts certain pages found to be objectionable.
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China to trigger electricity crisis in India?

China could carry out a cyber attack against India with the help of computer hardware and spare parts, according to a report by intelligence agencies. The agencies further believe that China would become an expert in such stealth attacks by 2017. 

According to the intelligence agencies, an extractor tool used in the production of electricity is imported from China and two such companies involved in the import of the equipment are already under the scanner. 

The agencies believe that China could use its equipment to create hurdles in India’s development march in the near future. An electricity crisis could be the result of such a design and has the capability to slow down Indian economy.
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Social media becoming double-edged sword

The online hate campaign targeting people from the northeast has put the spotlight on the power of the social media network in India, which counts more than 60 million users, and how this burgeoning community can be manipulated for insidious propaganda.

The unprecedented exodus of people from the northeast, abetted by hate messages, has also opened the debate about issues related to internet freedom and content regulation. India, which is looking into the alleged role of Pakistan-based elements in using morphed images on internet, has blocked over 250 websites for orchestrating the online campaign of hatred.

The last two years have seen an explosion of social media in the country with overwhelmingly young users. According to a report by iCRossing, nearly 36 million people in the country use Facebook. Of these, nearly 50 percent users are aged below 50. Estimates for 2012 posted on the India pages of various network sites show that microblogging site Twitter and LinkedIn have nearly 15 million users each in India.

This mushrooming is a double-edged sword. Social media has created a vibrant online community and widened public discourse, allowing a platform for activists with a thousand causes.

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The wide spectrum of subscribers' database which cuts social and language divides - with Facebook using Hindi as one its languages - has the potential to make the networks national security risk.

Not every user is discerning and the fact that there are no entry barriers makes the sites porous. Anyone can log in.

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The beginning of cyber warfare?

A day after Union home secretary RK Singh said that the bulk of rumours of imminent attacks on northeastern people for the killings of Muslims in Assam originated from Pakistan, experts said that this could be Pune’s first brush with cyber warfare. They also fear that all this is an indication of a major form of subversive warfare in the future.

Cyber warfare refers to politically motivated hacking to conduct sabotage and espionage. It is a form of information warfare sometimes seen as analogous to conventional warfare although this analogy is controversial for both its accuracy and its political motivation.

Hackers and other individuals trained in software programming and exploiting the intricacies of computer networks are the primary executors of these attacks. These individuals often operate under the auspices and possibly the support of nation-state actors.

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Cyber war: Blaming Pakistan is not enough

Delhi’s assertion that hostile websites in Pakistan have triggered the recent rioting in Mumbai and provoked the flight of northeastern migrants from Bengaluru and other cities might indeed be based on fact.

Blaming Pakistan, however, is not going to solve the enormous new challenges that confront India’s security planners in the cyber domain. Nor will requesting Islamabad to crackdown on the websites that deliberately spread disinformation against India will yield any real results.

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Israeli businesses hit by wave of hacker extortion

Several financial institutions and businesses have recently fallen victim to extortion by organized crime rings and independent hackers, which has cost these victims anywhere from a few thousand shekels to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Various ruses are used, but a common tactic is infiltrating a company's computer network or an employee's cell phone, stealing a file to prove a system breach, and threatening to leak sensitive documentation unless security software or consulting services are "bought" from the perpetrator.
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Most of the victims don't file police complaints, preferring to use private security firms to find the security lapse. Large companies, which by law are required to report such incidents, assume police don't have the manpower to deal with such extortion. Thus, they feel compelled to pay for the software, even though it can often be easily downloaded from the Internet.
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Scribes get cyber security lessons

Did you know that the Geotagging option on you mobile, if enabled, can give strangers, minute-to-minute information about your whereabouts? Or that just your telephone number can enable anyone to download all your personal information?
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Children were known to spend 6-8 hours on the Net every day and since they were not aware of the security options, there had been a 40 per cent growth in cyber-related crime.

When people begin to upload Geotagging on the Facebook through their smart phones, their physical presence at a particular spot gets mentioned.

If a cyber criminal is tracking you, he can easily locate your presence through the latitude and longitude mentioned along with your post. Every movement that you make during the day, can be tracked and recorded.
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40,000 robbed using cloned debit card

Cyber thieves have struck again. This time they managed to rob money from the account of a person at Vaikom by using a cloned debit card, and Rs 40,000 was withdrawn from an ATM in Kolkata.

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The victim came to know about the robbery when he received two SMS alerts about the transactions.

Credit/debit card cloning or 'skimming' is a technique used by fraudsters to obtain credit or debit card details using a device with a scanner. Once the card is swiped on the device, it collects the information on the card's magnetic strip and copies it to a counterfeit card.

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A cybersecurity solution is unresolved for a reason

As Congress adjourned for the summer recess, some issues were left unresolved, most notably the question of a cybersecurity bill. 

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There is no partisan dissent over whether cybersecurity – protecting computers, networks, programs and electronic information from being attacked and destroyed – is a critical issue. Experts have long cited cyber-terrorism as one of the potentially most dangerous threats to national security. Consider what might happen if a hostile government or terrorist organization launched an attack on our nation’s power grids, hospitals, nuclear facilities or major financial institutions – just to name a few possible targets. The effects would be devastating. The question is not whether we act to prevent such attacks, the question is how we act.

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Hackers hack Reuters website, publish false news of Saudi minister's death

The blogging platform of the Reuters News website was hacked and a false posting saying Saudi Arabia's foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal had died was illegally posted on a Reuters journalist's blog, the company said on Wednesday.
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Reuters had no immediate information on who was behind the hacking, the second time this month that the blogging platform of Reuters.com has been compromised.

On Aug 3, Reuters was forced to shut the platform temporarily after the appearance of unauthorized, and false, reports citing military reverses for rebels in Syria.
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Girl ends life after being harassed online

An 18-year-old girl studying in a polytechnic college in Punjab's Jalandhar was found hanging in her hostel room on Tuesday night after two youth posted obscene comments about her on a social networking site. 

Second year diploma student Raksha Sharma left behind a suicide note blaming Deepak Saini and Lovepreet Singh for pushing her to death. 
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Deepak and Lovepreet graduated from the same polytechnic this year. Raksha and Lovepreet were friends. For a while though their friendship had strained. After Raksha stopped talking to Lovepreet, he flooded her cellphone with offensive text messages threatening to throw acid on her. 

On Tuesday, Lovepreet and Deepak posted an obscene message about her on the social network site.
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Secret audit reveals DRDO irregularities

A confidential internal audit ordered by the defence ministry has found several financial and other irregularities in the functioning of the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), which has a network of 50 labs and an annual budget of over Rs 10,500 crore.
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The fresh internal audit, conducted by the finance wing of the defence ministry, has raised serious questions about the lack of transparency in DRDO's functioning, including the alleged sanctioning of Rs 2.80 crore by DRDO chief V K Saraswat to a mathematical society headed by him. 
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MMS provoked Pune attacks

The men arrested for the spate of attacks on students and working professionals from the northeast in Kondhwa and nearby areas have told the Pune police that they were provoked by an MMS clip purportedly of the recent violence against Muslims in Burma. 

Police investigations have revealed that the clip was doctored. Over the last few days, the MMS clip travelled quickly among youngsters, mostly in the Kondhwa area. A small percentage of those who got the MMS reacted violently by targeting people from the northeast.

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Police officers said most of the attackers are illiterate. They targeted their victims only because of their facial features…

Investigators said they had found no link so far between the attacks in Pune and the ethnic clashes in Assam.

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Hoax call made from cloned SIM

A hoax call about a ticking bomb on Saturday night has left police in a sweat about a new menace - phone cloning. While cases of criminals obtaining SIM cards on fake identities are commonplace, in the latest case pranksters seemed to have cloned the SIM card of a Ghaziabad based businessman to send police on a wild goose chase.
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According to reports, more than one lakh subscribers have fallen prey to this new telecom menace in India. The modus operandi of the SIM card cloning racket is simple. Callers get a missed call from a number starting with the above three mentioned numbers. The moment a subscriber calls back on the number, his or her cell phone is cloned.

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Gauss wants YOUR log-on

Kaspersky Lab has announced the discovery of ‘Gauss’, a new cyber-threat targeting users in the Middle East. Gauss is a nation-state sponsored cyber-espionage toolkit designed to steal sensitive data, with a specific focus on browser passwords, online banking account credentials, cookies, and specific configurations of infected machines.

The online banking Trojan functionality found in Gauss is a unique characteristic that was not found in any previously known cyber-weapons..............

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Govt official loses Rs 9 lakh in online fraud

Attempts to log into the website of the bank account cost a government official Rs nine lakh.

The victim identified as Dashtrath Das works with Indian Oil Corporation ( IOC) and has an account in a private bank. According to the police, Das logged into the bank's website and submitted his account ID and password. However, he did not know that the website was cloned by some miscreants.

Some days later, Rs 9.29 lakh were withdrawn from his account and deposited to different bank accounts.............

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Man held for sending threat mails to Anna University, college

A 39-year-old man, who was earlier held for sending bomb threat email toAnna University in 2010, has been arrested again on Sunday by the Coimbatore city police for sending bomb threat emails to two colleges and a University here. Police said the man used the name of a woman, who refused to speak to him, in the emails to take revenge..............

The accused has been identified as S Senthil, a resident at the Tamil Nadu Agriculture University staff quarters in the city.

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Educational foundation becomes victim of cyber crime

A leading educational foundation, which operates across India and has its office in Saket, has become the latest victim of online slur with an unidentified man putting up videos on YouTube with derogatory tags and texts and uploading the pictures and videos of the foundation's employees meet in sections of 'rave parties' and 'orgy'.............

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