Cybercrime golden age over in two years?

The golden age of cybercrime could come to a close as soon as 2014, according to Kaspersky Lab founder Eugene Kaspersky — as long as the world changes how it coordinates on creating laws to govern the internet.

Kaspersky slammed the traditional model of regulation for technology and cybercrime, criticising it of being slow and unsuitable. He compared it to writing a book on emerging security issues (which he had been approached to do, but deemed it as being impossible)...........

This doesn't mean that Kaspersky doesn't support regulation. Rather, he said that the world needs to do it in a smarter way. Instead of having governance for the internet fragmented across different geographies, which then causes chaos among different governments as they attempt to reconcile definitions and intents of individual pieces of legislation, Kaspersky said that moving the governance model to a unified body makes more sense.

"I think that finally we will have all these regulations and powers in place in 2014, [or] 2015 perhaps. I think that will be [the] end of the cybercrime golden age" he said.

His reasoning for this date is that Interpol will have completed its dedicated Command and Coordination Centre in Singapore by then...............

However, he acknowledged that there is an inherent danger involved in anyone having too much regulatory power, or responding to issues with disproportionate legislation...........

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MPs oppose curbs on internet; Sibal promises discussions

With MPs raising concerns over open-ended interpretations of restrictive terms in the rules seeking to regulate social media and internet, the government promised to evolve a consensus on points of contention. 

Telecom minister Kapil Sibal's assurance came at the end of an engrossing debate in Rajya Sabha on a motion moved by CPM MP P Rajeeve who said the rules violated freedom of expression and free speech. 

He found support from leader of oppositionArun Jaitley who picked several examples to point out that terms or descriptions like "harmful", "blasphemous" and "defamatory" did not lend themselves to precise legal definitions. Jaitley said what the government may find defamatory may not be seen in similar light by its critics. He also pointed to the difficulties of controlling technology and asked if it was desirable to do so. 

Assuring MPs who sought the annulment of 'rules' which are aimed at regulating internet content, Sibal said, "My assurance to the House is that I will request the MPs to write letters to me objecting to any specific words. I will then call a meeting of the members as well as the industry and all stakeholders. We will have a discussion and whatever consensus emerges, we will implement it........" 


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Hackers protest torrent ban, take down SC, Congress sites

Online hacker group Anonymous targeted websites of the Supreme Court of India and the All India Congress Committee on Thursday to protest Internet censorship.

Anonymous launched Operation India with a tweet that said, "Namaste #India, your time has come to trash the current government and install a new one. Good luck."

A YouTube video uploaded on May 15 by user Sen0nymous, titled 'Operation India Engaged', issued a call to action for fellow hackers. The video stated, "It has been known that the Government of India and its ministers are committing aristocracy. The idea of democracy remains an idea only."

"We were and are watching closely all activities of the Government and its ministers. Many ministers were and are charged with severe cases of corruption. They do not care. They do not care for the injustice happening. They do not care for the freedom being snatched."

"The Government has been covering up its activities and hiding the facts from its citizens. It has imposed the IT Act which allows it to censor the internet as it seems fit. None other than the Department of Telecommunications needs to be blamed. One cannot block on purview of security concerns."

The attacks come after the government asked Internet Service Providers to block websites such as The Pirate Bay, a file-sharing site, as well as video-sharing service Vimeo among others..........

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Curb the NET - Indian Government tells UN

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Cyber space played key role in 26/11 attack

The Mumbai attack perpetrated by Pakistan–based LeT was an example of how terror outfits use latest available IT tools for their decisive motives, a top US commander has said, highlighting the role of cyber space in such events.

"All the mission planning (for Mumbai terrorist attack) was done via Google Earth. There was no investment in technology of (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) platforms or anything like that," US Marine Corps Lt Gen George Flynn, Joint Staff's director of joint force development, said...........

During the Mumbai attack, terrorists used cellular phone networks as command and control and social media to track and thwart the efforts of Indian commandos. The terrorists behind the Mumbai attack exploited inexpensive and commonly available assets to plan and execute their onslaughts..........

When a tourist snapped and posted on the Web a cell phone photo of Indian army commandos dropping on the roof of the hotel, the terrorists used it to lay a trap to ambush the would-be rescuers. This was accomplished without any investment in expensive technologies or systems..........

Space and cyber will continue to play an increased role in events, with each becoming increasingly contested domains – so it's a new domain that we're going to have to contest............

The battle space of the past was linear with clear definitions, while the future battle space is multidimensional with several domains..........................

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IDSA Report: India allies to combat cybercrime

"As per the Director General of IDSA Dr Arvind Gupta, in analyzing the various dimensions of cyber security challenge to India, the Task Force argues that India must foresee and plan for various challenges arising out of the growth of internet and digitalization of governance. Failure to do so can be catastrophic and could affect national security, Indian economy and social stability. India is particularly vulnerable to the threats from cyber crime, cyber terrorism, cyber espionage and cyber warfare. India’s critical infrastructure is also vulnerable."

“India needs to create a climate and environment within which security is built into our cyber and communications working methods”, said National Security Advisor (NSA), Mr Shiv Shankar Menon. Mr Menon was releasing the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses’ (IDSA) report on India's Cyber Security Challenges at IDSA on May 16, 2012.

The NSA stated categorically that India was not in favour of curbing freedom of expression on the internet, but at the same time, in a democracy a line will need to be drawn between the collective right to security and individual’s right to privacy.

The nation needs to harden its critical networks and develop metrics to certify and assure that our critical cyber networks, equipment and infrastructure are secure………….

What makes the Cyber Security issue even more complicated  is the fact that these technologies are not just available to the state where law and policies can control and limit their use, they are widely available in the public domain where commercial and individual motives can easily lead to misuse.

Drawing a comparison between states, the NSA said that information technologies and their effects have made asymmetric strategies much more effective and attractive. He added that the weaker states use cyber war and anti satellite capabilities to neutralise or raise the cost and deter the use of its military strength by a stronger sate.

The NSA concluded that India should be prepared to deal with both the threats to cyber space and risks arising through cyber space, as a “step towards a coherent and comprehensive cyber security policy”, adding that the while NTRO is tasked to deal with the protection of our critical security cyber infrastructure, institutions like CERT-IN have proved their worth during events like Common Wealth Games in defending our open civil systems……………….

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Fighting over Facebook post, class X boy stabs schoolmate

A picture posted on Facebook led to such bitterness among two Class X students of a well-known private school in central Delhi that one of them stabbed the other with a paper cutter in school on Wednesday morning............ 

The victim suffered six stab wounds, with the cutter slashing through his veins. He was rushed to the Ganga Ram Hospital in Rajender Nagar where an operation was conducted to stop the bleeding................

Friends and family members of the victim said the two boys, both 15 years old, turned bitter rivals after they attended a party some time ago. Someone clicked a group photo at the party. The accused allegedly circulated a cropped photo of the victim with another student which was objected to by the victim. This led to tension between the two.............


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8,000 cyber attacks warded off during CWG

A staggering 8,000 cyber attacks were warded off during the 2010 Commonwealth Games, national security advisor Shivshankar Menon said Wednesday, pointing to India's capabilities.

"There were over 8,000 attacks during the Commonwealth Games on ticketing and other systems. This was pure malice. I can't see any advantage in targeting ticketing and other networks," Menon said. He was taking part in an interactive session after releasing a report on "India's Cyber Security Challenge" brought out by the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA).



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Human rights protection in Indian Cyberspace

Human rights protection in Indian cyberspace is an ignored world. Very few are aware of the importance of this issues and even the mainstream media is ignorant about the importance of safeguarding human rights in cyberspace. This is the reason why the traditional mainstream media is occasionally defeated by social media websites these days.   The position of United Nations and human Rights in cyberspace is still not clear. Naturally, human rights protection in cyberspace is still in the process of contemplation alone. UN must realise that protecting human rights in cyberspace is its solemn duty that it has failed to discharge so far.............


However, this issue seems to be a complicated one as UN is taking lots of time to protect human rights in cyberspace.   The World community on Human Rights, Cyber Law and Cyber Security must start thinking in this direction as issues like Cyber Warfare, Cyber Terrorism, Cyber Espionage, Cyber Crimes, E-Surveillance, Unlawful Interceptions, etc are “Transnational” in nature.....


Take the example of India. The lawful interception law is needed in India and the same is still missing despite contrary governmental claims. Till now, phone tapping in India is not constitutionally performed. The truth is that big brother in India is violating Indian constitution and even courts are silent on this aspect...........


Indian government has been taking many steps that are strengthening its e-surveillance and censorship capabilities without meeting the constitutional requirements. For instance, the central monitoring system project of India,  national cyber coordination centre (NCCC) of India, national intelligence grid (Natgrid), national counter terrorism centre (NCTC) of India, Aadhar project of India, etc are all proposed without any legal framework supervising and justifying their functioning.....................


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Missing Nashik girls traced to Punjab, brought back

Two minor girls who had gone missing two weeks ago, lured to Punjab by friends they made on a social networking website, were traced by cops to Punjab and brought home on Tuesday.

 According to police officials girls and women are being lured, abused and threatened through social networking sites on a large scale but most of the time the victims are reluctant to file complaint fearing it may bring disrepute to their families..........

The girls had gone missing from their homes two weeks back. The girls left their respective homes saying that they were going to give their examinations. One of the girls also stole some cash and jewellery from her home. The boyfriend of one of the girls, who she had met on a social networking website, resided in Punjab...........

It was revealed that the girls were internet geeks and used to constantly chat with strangers online.........

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Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad leader booked for sending obscene SMS

An Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) leader Sunny Rathore has been booked for cyber-crime for allegedly sending obscene SMS to a woman yoga trainer at Multai in Betul district of Madhya Pradesh...............

The police registered a case against Rathore under the Section 507 of the IPC for criminal intimidation by anonymous communication and under 66 A and 67 A of the Information technology Amendment Act (ITAA) for sending of offensive messages and sexually explicit content......

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Two AI men arrested for derogatory remarks against SC, PMO

Cyber cell investigators of the Mumbai crime branch on Friday arrested two Air India employees for posting derogatory remarks against the Supreme Court and the Prime Minister’s Office on social networking sites. The police said there were some issues between the two groups of the cabin crew association, and while passing remarks against each other on websites; two of them passed remarks against the SC and the PMO.

The two accused identified as K.V. Janannathrao and Mayank Sharma, cabin crew of Air India, were nabbed and remanded to police custody till May 18.........

When the police started verifying the facts based on the complaint filed by Sagar Karnik, who is also an AI employee, it stumbled upon various objectionable contents the accused had posted on Orkut and Facebook.

Apart from using foul language while addressing the rival group and their leaders, the accused had also passed unparliamentary language against the PMO, home ministry and Supreme Court. The accused also gave a death threat to the complainant over a union dispute..........

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Man changes gender to harass woman on Facebook

The Mumbai Cyber Crime Cell has arrested a man for allegedly creating a fake profile on Facebook using a woman’s name to befriend and thereon harass a media professional in Mumbai.

The 25-year-old accused Shyam Gajanan Bahekar, resident of Buldhana, had created a fake profile and sent a friend request to the victim. Thinking that the request came from her school friend, the victim accepted it. The accused, thereon, asked the victim for her cell phone number and also provided his number, posing as her female friend. He also sent her a message stating that he wanted to speak with him immediately.

The victim was surprised when she called the number as it was answered by a man instead of her friend. He identified himself as Javed and told her that he was her school friend’s boyfriend.

Upon suspicion, the victim tried to terminate the conversation but the accused insisted that they talk to each other and become friends..........

After a few days, the victim realised that her number was floating around on facebook, accompanying an ad for ‘free sex’. The accused had allegedly posted her name and number on the page he had created, inviting people to call if they wanted ‘free sex’..........

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Websites of many educational institutions hacked

BHUBANESWAR: In a cyber attack of sorts, websites of scores of educational institutions of the State were found defaced by unidentified hackers on Sunday. This has sent the managements in a tizzy.

The targets included Government universities and private technical institutes besides portals of other organisations. The hacker, who identified himself/herself as K9 Network Cyber Army, posted messages ‘protesting militarization of Jammu and Kashmir’.

The two major universities of the City are also among the victims. Utkal University of Culture found its websites compromised by hacker ‘Mahesh’. Some of the private institutes such as Mahavir Institute of Engineering and Technology, Majhighariani Institute of Technology and Science and Majhighariani Institute of Polytechnic found their websites attacked by the hacker too. A bio-diesel project of Majhighariani was also compromised.

Most of the hacked websites are hosted by All India Online which is the host for a majority of Odisha colleges’ and other institutions’ websites. One of the dedicated servers of All India Online appears to have been hacked........

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Cyber sleuths hit babu firewall

Can government officials claim right to privacy if their emails have been hacked and security agencies ask for full access to the contents of the accounts? Efforts of Indian intelligence agencies to counter waves of cyber attacks on government networks have run into an iron wall. Although access to the compromised email accounts of officials is critical for investigations, officials are less than keen. The officials say that allowing the agencies to trawl contents of all their emails will breach their privacy: a position which is being supported by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), the custodian of all official electronic data......... 

Faced with regular attacks on government’s critical infrastructure, agencies are discussing how much detail regarding the e-mails can be made available to investigators as officials are chary about private mails being scrutinized............... 
    
From phishing to acquire information such as usernames and passwords to planting Trojans that provide remote access to a user’s computer and network, the attacks are consistent and widespread. Trojans can be used for downloading or uploading files from, or to, a system. 

Sources in the military and intelligence agencies say NIC — the official holder of official emails and websites — has been fending off bids to access hacked official emails. In case of such foreign cyber attacks, there are no police cases filed or any formal criminal investigation launched. Public email providers such as Google part with details of e-mails only when law enforcement agencies file formal cases and seek details........ 

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Jilted lover takes cyber revenge

Rejected by the girl he loved since his school days, a final year LLB student created her fake profile on Facebook and uploaded obscene pictures of an unknown woman on the website. Two months after the girl lodged a police complaint, the crime branch has finally managed to nab the youth.

The victim, daughter of an east Delhi businessman, and the accused, Shubham Kansal (22), had been classmates at school. After school, the two lost touch but Kansal rediscovered the girl on Facebook. He proposed a long-term relationship with the 21-year-old but she declined. Swearing vengeance, Kansal took months to plot his revenge. He created a fake Facebook profile in the girl's name and posted her personal information on it..........

Kansal disclosed that he devised the plan after watching a movie in February when all his efforts to re-establish contact with the girl failed...........

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Taming the Web, are we?

Two decades after its advent changed our lives, the world wide web - as we know it - faces a grave threat. Not from governments alone, but also from tech companies seeking to play gatekeepers 
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Why the urgency? Is the internet broken? Jarvis says it is not. "The net is operating no differently today than it was a decade ago. But we see so many efforts to fix it - to regulate it under the cloak of privacy, piracy, decency, security, and even civility," he says. "I believe legacy institutions, including governments, are waking up to the extent of the net's disruptive force... they are trying to control the net and govern the change it causes." 
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Unlike the web, which makes it easy for anyone to access a service - and, more importantly, offer a service - the world of apps is a controlled one. Companies that control the app ecosystem act as gatekeepers. For example, Apple's guidelines suggest developers cannot offer apps that compete with the company's own services. Then, there is restriction on the content that is perceived by Apple as pornographic, obscene, violent or racist. Microsoft and Google have a similar set of rules for their app stores, though Google's store is perceived to have more relaxed guidelines. Last week, Facebook announced it would open an app store. 
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Ever since India introduced a set of new IT rules in April last year, web activists have been up in arms. The rules put a lot of liability on intermediaries - such as internet service providers (ISPs) - for the conduct of users and make it easier for authorities to remove content from the web. Recently P Rajeev, a CPM MP from Kerala, moved a motion in the Rajya Sabha seeking annulment of the rules. Rajeev's motion is likely to come up for discussion on Tuesday. 

Seeing a window of opportunity, web activists have kicked off a fresh campaign against the IT rules. Lawyer Prasanth Sugathan, counsel to Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC), says, "We do need laws but not the ones that the Indian government framed last year. These IT rules are plain arbitrary." 

The SFLC is running an online signature campaign. And the Centre for Internet and Society has asked Indian web users to bombard their MPs with emails explaining why the new IT rules need to be scrapped. Sugathan says many organizations have joined hands for the cause; meetings have been held in several cities to raise awareness about the issue. Volunteers of one group called Save Your Voice protested through a hungerstrike at Jantar Mantar in Delhi last week.




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Web should remain without regulation: Vint Cerf

In a very short period of time the internet has had a profound impact on the way we live. Since the Internet was made operational in 1983, it has lowered both the costs of communication and the barriers to creative expression. It has challenged old business models and enabled new ones. It has provided access to information on a scale never before achievable.
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It would be foolish not to acknowledge that the openness of the internet has had a price. Security is an increasingly important issue and cannot be ignored. If there is an area of vital research and development for the internet, this is one of them. I am increasingly confident, however, that techniques and practices exist to make the internet safer and more secure while retaining its essentially open quality.
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Improve data security with staff training

One of the most effective ways to improve information security in the workplace is to ensure that workers are educated about cyber crime. Training staff is a "big part in the arsenal" of data protection........

It is essential that companies work to fill in these gaps by making sure that executive staff are as well versed in IT security as they are in other sectors like sales and finance. Unless firms equip their workers with the necessary tools to tackle cyber crime, even the most sophisticated security systems can be undermined by a lack of staff knowledge.

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is a major cause of data loss and cybercrime, as connecting a personal device to the corporate system can compromise security and even result in a malware attack........
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Cyber attacks: Have India's neighbours turned culprits?

As cyber criminals continue to strike with impunity, private and government companies in India face tough task of securing their data.....

• 2011: 15,000 Indian websites hacked
• 2012: 112 government websites hacked in first three months
• CERT India: 2460 Indian websites were hacked during February 2012

These numbers point to how security measures have often failed organisations, leaving them vulnerable to cyber attacks. A renowned Indian company came under cyber attack recently when its website was unaccessible for hours.

What was more serious was the fact that it involved blackmailing too as the attackers left a note stating they would continue the attacks unless huge amount was transferred to their account.

This is not an isolated incident, but it is one of the very few to be reported. The attacks come in various forms like Distributed Denial Of Service, phishing attacks or even military grade attacks.

The latest India Risk Survey 2012, published by Pinkerton, a consulting firm, finds that the cyber crime rate in India has gone up by 50 per cent and during the last five years, around 9,000 Indian websites, including various government departments, have been hacked. Many government websites, some of them carrying sensitive information, have become victims of cross-border hacking, mainly from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and China.

The survey also points out that cases of data theft have been reported from almost every industrial and corporate hub of India. However, banking industry is found to be most vulnerable to phishing attacks in India.........

India lost around Rs. 171.94 crores ($38.2mn) in 2011 to phishing attacks, according to RSA, the security division of EMC, which has released its findings on phishing attacks in that year. Furthermore, RSA put the total loss at Rs 5760 crore ($1.28bn) globally. RSA has also ranked India among the top 5 most targeted countries for phishing attacks..................

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