Youth uses uncle’s debit card to ‘purchase’ his own phone online

It was a smart crime involving a smart phone that was caught on the web. A youth, who used his uncle’s ATM/debit card to buy his own cell phone from a shopping website, was caught by the cyber crime cell, Hazratganj a couple of days ago. He had posted his Samsung Galaxy S-III for sale on the shopping website — www.ebay.in — that facilitates online sale and purchase of mobiles, gadgets and other stuff.

Complainant RS Srivastava (the youth’s uncle) received an SMS alert on his cell phone at 5.27pm on October 4 that his SBI account debit card had been used for purchase of a phone worth Rs. 25,000.

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Facebook used to kidnap, traffic Indonesian girls

DEPOK(INDONESIA): When a 14-year-old girl received a Facebook friend request from an older man she didn't know, she accepted it out of curiosity. It's a click she will forever regret, leading to a brutal story that has repeated itself as sexual predators find new ways to exploit Indonesia's growing obsession with social media.

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The man, a 24-year-old who called himself Yogi, drove her an hour to the town of Bogor, West Java, she said in an interview. There, he locked her in a small room inside a house with at least five other girls aged 14 to 17. She was drugged and raped repeatedly - losing her virginity in the first attack.
After one week of torture, her captor told her she was being sold and shipped to the faraway island of Batam, known for its seedy brothels and child sex tourism that caters to men coming by boat from nearby Singapore.
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Iran Jams U.S. Satellite Broadcasts

By siavash

Washington, D.C. — Iranian jamming of U.S. government-sponsored news and information programs disrupted broadcasts from Morocco to Eastern Europe to Indonesia, the Broadcasting Board of Governors has found.

Satellite operator Eutelsat confirmed that the intermittent jamming was coming from inside Iran. This most recent episode of interference with broadcasts began on Oct. 3 and is in clear violation of international agreements.

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One of the BBG’s Internet anti-censorship vendors is reporting that traffic from Iran using its software and servers has increased substantially since the jamming began.  This suggests that Iranian listeners and viewers are shifting to the Internet to receive news and information.

Jamming is prohibited under rules of the International Telecommunications Union.  The recent jamming affected not only U.S.-supported programming, but also the British Broadcasting Corporation.

International Broadcasting Bureau Director Richard M. Lobo called the most recent interference “an outrage (and) a deplorable violation of well-established international agreements” in a statement issued when the incident started.

The jamming coincided with reports of street demonstrations and mass arrests of Iranians protesting falling currency exchange rates. Both VOA and RFE/RL report that in some instances, interference starts just before newscasts, and ends just afterwards.

Three satellite transponders operated by Eutelsat and those most popular among Iranian viewers have been affected: HotBird 13B, Eutelsat 25A and Eutelsat 7A. Viewers said the signals reappear intermittently.

The interference has diminished or altogether blocked other U.S.-supported programs on the Eutelsat satellites, including Georgian, Armenian, Bosnian, Korean and many other language broadcasts.

VOA and RFE/RL programs continue to be broadcast on diverse media platforms, including digital audio and video streams on other satellite paths and on the Internet.

In February, the ITU called upon the world’s nations to take “necessary actions” to stop intentional interference with satellite transmissions. Earlier, the BBG and other international broadcasters called for action against jamming.

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Google FUD or State-Sponsored Attack Threat?

Select users of Google’s services are once again receiving warnings regarding the possibility that they may be at risk of falling victim to state-sponsored attacks. Is this just more fear, uncertainty and doubt, or is there a legitimate threat backing up the move by the search engine giant?

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“First, it generates fear on the part of Google’s customers because regardless of the fine print, such a warning will most likely send the recipient into panic mode when there’s no reason to panic. Second, it makes a claim which upon investigation is so vague that it’s meaningless. You may be the victim of a state or someone working on a state’s behalf? That’s pretty much the case for all targeted attacks,” wrote security consultant Jeffery Carr, founder and CEO of Taia Global.

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“The bottom line as far as Google’s advice is concerned is that it’s FUD-inducing for the people who aren’t targets and its insufficient for those who are. I have to wonder what Google was thinking when it created this awful program.”

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Managed Ransomware-as-a-Service spotted in the wild

By Dancho Danchev

Over the past several quarters, we’ve witnessed the rise of the so called Police Ransomware also known as Reveton.

From fully working host lock down tactics, to localization in multiple languages and impersonation of multiple international law enforcement agencies, its authors proved that they have the means and the motivation to continue developing the practice, while earning tens of thousands of fraudulently obtained funds.

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According to the advertisement, the actual malicious executable is both x32 and x64 compatible, successfully blocking system keys and other attempts to kill the malicious application. The cybercriminals behind the managed service have already managed to localize their templates in the languages of 13 prospective European countries such as Switzerland, Greece, France, Sweden, Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Belgium, Portugal, Finland, Spain, Germany, and Austria.

The price for the service? $1,000 on a monthly basis for a managed, bulletproof command and control infrastructure.

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The managed service relies primarily on the Ukash voucher-based payment system, and the command and control interface conveniently displays the voucher codes and their monetary value, allowing the users of the service an easy way to claim the money from the vouchers.

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Basic Use of Maltego for Network Intelligence Gathering

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CID probing hacking of Karnatka Chief Minister’s website

Cyber crime officials of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) are trying to track the internet protocol (IP) address from where Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar’s personal website was hacked on Wedneday.

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Manager’s e-mail hacked, complaint filed in Ahmedabad

In a police complaint filed with Cyber Crime Cell (CCC) of Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) on Friday, one Karnik Shah claimed that his e-mail was hacked by unknown people, who now have accessed vital documents from the emails.

Shah is general manager with a city-based pharmaceutical company, who was recently transferred to Ahmedabad from Jammu and Kashmir.

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AP BJP chief gets death threat on Facebook from Pak national

HYDERABAD, SEPT 29: 

Andhra Pradesh BJP unit chief G Kishan Reddy on Saturday lodged a police complaint after he allegedly received death threat from a Pakistani national on a social networking site, police said.

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ISRO scientist’s son, 2 others held for credit card fraud

Ahmedabad: Based on a tip-off received by a constable of cyber crime cell of Detection of Crime Branch (DCB), officials caught three persons with 33 cloned credit cards on Sunday. Among the arrested, two people run a call centre in the city while the third is a wanted criminal from Rajasthan. Investigation revealed that one of the accused is the son of a scientist at Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in the city.

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Cybercrime cost India $8 billion in last 12 months: Norton

NEW DELHI: More than 42 million people in India have fallen prey to cybercrime in the past 12 months, suffering about $ 8 billion in direct financial losses, estimates a report by security solutions firm Norton.

The 'Norton Cybercrime Report 2012' found, based on experiences of more than 13,000 adults across 24 countries (including 1,000 from India), said direct costs associated with global consumer cybercrime are pegged at $ 110 billion over the past twelve months.

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Globally, every second 18 adults become a victim of cybercrime, resulting in more than one-and-a-half million cybercrime victims each day, the report said.

With losses totaling an average of $ 197 per victim across the world in direct financial costs, in the past 12 months, an estimated 556 million adults across the world experienced cybercrime.

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In India, one in three respondents (32 per cent) said they have been a victim of either social or mobile cybercrime in the last 12 months.

About 51 per cent of social network users among the Indian respondents said they have been victims of social cybercrime.

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"Cybercriminals are changing their tactics to target fast growing mobile platforms and social networks where consumers are less aware of security risks," Norton Internet Safety Advocate and Director (Asia) Effendy Ibrahim said.

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‘Indian police not capable of solving hi-tech cyber crimes’

Chandigarh - A senior UT police officer on Friday stated that the country’s police force was not capable of solving hi-tech cyber crimes. “If we rate the cyber crimes in the country on a scale of 1 to 10, the Indian police forces are only capable of solving the crimes at the scale of 3, or a maximum 4,” said the Superintendent of Police (Traffic), Chandigarh, Maneesh Chaudhry while addressing a two-day workshop on cyber crimes at the Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh.

From lack of mandatory computer training during recruitment to lack of international treaties, Chaudhry cited various difficulties faced by the Indian police forces in tracking cyber crimes. 

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“Today, if you want to register a case of cyber crime, the police station officials will send you to the cyber crime cell as all police stations are not equipped to handle such offences. The recruitment process should be amended to include at least some percentage of officials specially trained for cyber crime. When cyber crime also fails, we require help of the cyber forensic experts,” Chaudhry said.

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The police official also cited the process required to obtain evidence as another hindrance. Evidence related to cyber crime is gathered from Forensic Science Laboratories (FSLs). There is one FSL in every state and there are six central FSLs. “Once the information has been sought from the FSLs, it takes months for them to get back with any report as they are overworked with many cases piling up. By that time, the accused is no more under investigation; he is either on Judicial custody or bailed out,” Chaudhry said. He insisted that there should be a FSL at every police station to handle the increasing number of cyber crimes.

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White House thwarts cyber attack

A White House official said the attack targeted an unclassified network. He said the attack was identified and the system was isolated to prevent spread. He said there was no indication that any data was removed.

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Last year, Google blamed computer hackers in China for a phishing effort against Gmail accounts of several hundred people, including senior U.S. government officials and military personnel. Last November, senior US intelligence officials for the first time publicly accused China of systematically stealing American hi-tech data for its own national economic gain.

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Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, during a visit to China last month, raised the subject of China-based cyber-attacks against U.S. companies and the government.

The Obama administration is preparing an executive order with new rules to protect US computer systems.

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An initial draft of the order included provisions for voluntary cybersecurity standards for companies.

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An application can make your phone spy on you

LONDON: US military experts have demonstrated a new smartphone app that can turn your mobile's camera into a spying tool for cyber criminals, secretly beaming images of your house, chequebook and other private information back to them.

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The app 'PlaiceRaider' was created by US military experts at Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Indiana, to show how cybercriminals could operate in the future, the Daily Mail reported. 

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The team said they could glean vital information from all 20 users, and that the 3D reconstruction made it much easier to steal information than by just using the images alone.

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Researcher Robert Templeman said their app can run in the background of any smartphone using the Android 2.3 operating system. Through use of phone's camera and other sensors, PlaceRaider constructs 3-D models of indoor environments. "Remote burglars can thus download the physical space, study the environment carefully, and steal virtual objects from the environment," researchers said.

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Pen drives main threat to cyber security: Army

NEW DELHI: Despite a ban, use of pen drives has emerged as the main threat to cyber security in defence forces as it is responsible for over 70 per cent of such breaches in the three Services.

The use of pen drives as an easy-to-carry storage device has increased in the recent past and internal reports have confirmed that over 70 per cent cyber security breaches in the armed forces are due to their unauthorised use, Army officials said.

"These pen drives, which are mostly manufactured in China, have emerged as a big threat to our cyber security systems," they said.

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Armed forces further tightening cyber security, IT usage norms

NEW DELHI: The armed forces are further tightening cyber security and information technology usage norms for all its personnel to prevent the "leaking" of confidential data and information, apart from reiterating strict orders to refrain from posting classified information on social networking websites.
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All IAF officers, for instance, will now have to sign a declaration that they will not "save or view" any official document on personal computers as well as provide details of digital storage devices being used for official purposes. Any violation will attract strict action, warned IAF authorities.

The Army has already directed all its officers and personnel to even remove their pictures and information showing their affiliation to the service from their personal profiles on social networking websites.

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