SOPA bill

The House of Representatives is expected to vote on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill sponsored by Rep. Elton Gallegly. This bill drastically expands the power of the federal government and enables it to censor the Internet.

Companies that do understand, such as Google, Ebay, Microsoft, reddit, Tumblr, Twitter and Wikipedia, have come out against this bill as it threatens California technology companies and cripples the Internet.

While piracy is a legitimate concern, this bill allows the federal government to shut down any site that has one single link to any copyrighted material, meaning if your son posts a video on Youtube that includes a copyrighted song, the government can shut down all of Youtube or Facebook or Google or any other Internet company.

This is not hyperbole, this is literally the end of the Internet as we know it, a draconian and unprecedented expansion of government power that China would be proud of.

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DHS issued - Blueprint for a Secure Cyber Future

The Blueprint for a Secure Cyber Future builds on the Department of Homeland Security Quadrennial Homeland Security Review Report’s strategic framework by providing a clear path to create a safe, secure, and resilient cyber environment for the homeland security enterprise.
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The Blueprint lists four goals for protecting critical information infrastructure:
• Reduce Exposure to Cyber Risk
• Ensure Priority Response and Recovery
• Maintain Shared Situational Awareness
• Increase Resilience
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The Blueprint also lists four goals for strengthening the cyber ecosystem:
• Empower Individuals and Organizations to Operate Securely
• Make and Use More Trustworthy Cyber Protocols, Products, Services, Configurations and
Architectures
• Build Collaborative Communities
• Establish Transparent Processes
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How the RQ-170, US drone was hijacked

The Christian Science Monitor is reporting that the RQ-170 was hijacked by the Iranians using a well know exploit that sure seems to me to be a lot like an old and well known cyber attack known as "the man-in-the-middle" attack. 

Using intelligence gleaned from previously downed and less sophisticated drones, an Iranian engineer, identified that the global positioning system (GPS) is the weak link in the drone's security posture.

The "electronic ambush" begins by jamming the drone's communications forcing the plane into autopilot whereby it loses its "brain".  From there, the Iranians were able to "spoof" and interject landing coordinates to get the plane to land where they wanted it to land.

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FBI says hackers hit key services in three US cities

At a recent cybersecurity conference, Michael Welch, deputy assistant director of the FBI's cyber division, said hackers had accessed crucial water and power services.
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"We just had a circumstance where we had three cities, one of them a major city within the US, where you had several hackers that had made their way into Scada systems within the city," Mr Welch told delegates at the Flemings Cyber Security conference.


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The Kremlin's Ham-handed Effort to Squelch Online Dissent

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In total, 14 sites were victims of DDoS attacks, including those of the radio station Ekho Moskvy, the newspaper Kommersant, and Golos, the country's only independent election watchdog. Those Web sites were attacked as early as 6:40 on Sunday morning, according to Alexei Venediktov, Ekho Moskvy's editor-in-chief, and remained offline for the entire day. According to information-security experts at Yandex, Russia's largest search portal, more than 200,000 computers were turned into "slaves" for the DDoS attack, in which a targeted site receives so many requests for access that it simply shuts down. It is a simple, cheap, and effective way to disrupt a Web site, at least temporarily.
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Anatomy of a Nitro Cyber Attack by Symantec

Latest report by Symantec.
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"The Nitro Attacks whitepaper, published by Symantec Security Response, was a snapshot of a hacking group’s activity spanning July 2011 to September 2011.  The same group is still active, still targeting chemical companies, and still using the same social engineering modus operandi,"
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They are sending targets a password-protected archive, through email, which contains a malicious executable. The executable is a variant of Poison IVY and the email topic is some form of upgrade to popular software, or a security update. The most recent email brazenly claims to be from Symantec and offers protection from 'poison Ivy Trojan'," the authors explain.
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"The attachment itself is called “the_nitro_attackspdf.7z”. The attachment archive contains a file called “the_nitro_attackspdf                            .exe”. (The large gap between the “pdf” and “.exe” is a basic attempt to fool a user into assuming that the document is a PDF, when it is really a self-extracting archive.)," the article states.




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Man held for hacking email account of rival firm

VADODARA: The cyber crime cell of city crime branch cracked a hacking case and arrested one person on Tuesday. The case involves two city-based outsourcing firms Office Beacon andZodiac Infotech that are competitors.

Tejas Mehta has been arrested for hacking the official email account of Office Beacon for professional gains. Mehta, who works withDesign 4U, sister concern of Zodiac Infotech, had earlier worked for Office Beacon.

Police said Mehta hacked into the email account of Office Beacon (OB)to get an order.

Mehta used to work for OB and had resigned from there in 2010 to join Design 4U. In December 2010, OB got information from its New York-based client that they have got an email from ID awalker@design4u.com. The mail had landed in OB's client's id soon after OB had sent it quotations for a deal. The quotations sent by awalker email id were less than OB's quotations. When OB official Chandrakant Thakkar checked their official id he realized that it had been hacked. OB officials then checked their company servers and dug out the IP address from where the second mail was sent.

It came to light that the email was sent from Zodiac Infotech. Investigations revealed that Mehta had hacked OB's email id from Zodiac Infotech and was using it to keep track of OB's deals and offers.

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UTV alleges trademark misuse

NEW DELHI: UTV has written a letter to the social-networking site, Facebook, asking it to remove a page that was using its name for duping aspiring actors. Further, Delhi high court has granted temporary stay in the misuse of trademark of UTV Software Communications. The order came while hearing a civil suit filed by the production house on December 12 against a fake casting agency running under the name of 'UTV Entertainment Media Private Ltd' in Noida.

"UTV lodged a complaint with Facebook after it found a page with the name of 'UTV Entertainment Media Pvt Ltd'. Facebook was informed that the logo appearing on the page was deceptively similar to UTV's logo. The page was then removed," said a source.

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Mumbai: Man, son held in friendship club case

A father-son duo has been arrested by the Cyber Crime Police of the city crime branch in the friendship club fraud case.

Investigations revealed that Babu Latif Shaikh and his son Ejaz had provided mobile numbers to the operators of the club and were also handling monetary operations of the club.

Explaining the modus-operandi, the police said the gang published an advertisement in newspapers on the name of Aaliya Friendship Club. On payment of Rs10,200 membership fee, the club promised to connect their members to “smart, good-looking and high-profile women”.

When one of the victims contacted the club in October this year, he was told to deposit money in a bank account. When the club failed to meet their promise, the victim realised that he had been cheated and lodged a police complaint. Investigations revealed that it was a full-fledged racket in the garb of friendship club.

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Student in obscene MMS web

The cyber crime department of the City Central Crime police station on Tuesday arrested a B.Tech student who circulated an obscene MMS of his ex-girl friend and also posted the photos online on a false Facebook profile created in her name. Police said the accused, 19-year old G. Krishna, a B.Tech (bioinformatics) student of Satyabhama Deemed University in Chennai, confessed that he sent the obscene MMS and made the Facebook postings after the victim, a medical student, stopped talking to him and he felt dejected.

He also took print-outs of the photos and dropped them off at the house of her relatives.

Police said that the two were schoolmates at Abhyasa in Toopran.

After they left school, Krishna got a common friend to contact her. He spoke to her on the phone and they met a couple of times during which time he took the photos. When she cut off all relations with him, he bore her a grudge. Krishna printed the photographs and dropped them at her relative's house. The girl's father warned him and his parents, who said they would control him. But Krishna went on to create the false profile and posted the photos online and sent the MMS to their common friends. Krishna is charged with defamation and under section 66 A of the IT Act.

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'Gmail' storage upgrade phishing mail steals user logins and passwords

Anew phishing mail from ‘Gmail’ has popped up on the Internet asking users to upgrade their account storage because their quota has been exhausted. A closer look will show that it’s actually a phishing e-mail and not a genuine one. We received this e-mail last night, and a quick glance at our Gmail storage did show that data storage was quite close to its limit. Also, the e-mail first arrived in our inbox and not in the spam folder. Here’s a closer look at what happened next. Billgates@microsoft.com has run out of space!..on Gmail!? Titled ‘Google Account Storage Quota Exhausted on ******@gmail.com’, the e-mail may look genuine to most users, initially. The mail is sent by no_reply@qmail.com and at first, it’s difficult to actually notice the difference in the alphabets because the name shows Accounts Support with the actual e-mail in brackets, like any other standard mail you’ll get in your Gmail inbox. Here’s a screenshot of what’s written in the email: Might fool some unsuspecting users For an unsuspecting user, this mail does look creepily close to a genuine mail by Gmail, but if you’ll hover over that link and look at the bottom left you’ll get to see the REAL URL, which is servicessc.----.acconutx.net (Obviously, we’re not putting up the entire URL!) It takes you to a page that looks quite identical to Google (the minute giveaway being the slightly warped Gmail icon) that asks you to choose your ‘Free’ storage option and enter your password. Thereafter, the site simply mentions that your account has been successfully updated. Phishing complete! Hopefully, these emails will end up in the spam folder. Unfortunately, the first victims might have already fallen prey to this scam. If you’re one of those who have already clicked on the link and entered your password, we’d suggest you immediately change your password, because in all certainty your password has been compromised.

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Virtual Attack, Real Threat

Cyber warfare is emerging as the new dimension of war

New Delhi: Foreign entities penetrated into the servers at the National Informatics Centre (NIC) servers to launch attacks on other countries including Chinese servers, read a leading newspaper headline, few days back. The servers at NIC hold crucial information of the official websites and emails of the Indian government. The websites of PMO, embassies, law enforcement and intelligence agencies are continuously probed to extract sensitive information related to the national security. Information on our government servers are constantly under threat. These are far more sophisticated attacks than some mischievous hacker groups.

On 19 October 2011, Symantec has released a report on a new threat called Duqu. A server in Mumbai was shut after the initial reports of Symantec Corporation revealed that they had found out that it was compromised.

It was used as a command and control server to manage other machines and was communicating with the computers that were infected with the Duqu malware. This mysterious computer virus, according to the report, is similar to the Stuxnet which created havoc in Iran’s nuclear power plant and disrupted its production temporarily. The Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) like Stuxnet and Duqu has the potential to target a critical infrastructure and according to the reports, India is one of the highly infected countries to these advanced threats.

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Congress website hacked, Sonia Gandhi's profile defaced

NEW DELHI: Hackers broke into the officialwebsite of India's ruling Congress party Friday and defaced the profile page of party presidentSonia Gandhi with a pornographic message.

The attack coincided with Gandhi's 65th birthday and came just days after the Indian government pledged a crackdown on "unacceptable" internet content, that included faked naked pictures of the Congress leader.

The pornographic text included a reference to a Pakistan-based email address, but did not otherwise identify the hackers.

Earlier this week, Communications Minister Kapil Sibal pledged a crackdown on "unacceptable" online content, saying Internet giants such as Google, Yahoo! and Facebook had ignored India's demands to screen images and data before they are uploaded.

He highlighted examples of faked pictures of naked politicians, including Sonia Gandhi, and other images and social network pages that he said could inflame religious tensions.

Official Indian websites have been repeatedly hacked in the past. Last year, a group who identified themselves as the " Pakistan Cyber Army" hacked the website of the country's top police agency.

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5-6 pc of spam e-mails originate from India

According to international reports, the total email traffic worldwide categorised as spam is about 75-80 per cent in 2011

The government on Friday said about 5-6 per cent of the global spam or junk e-mails in 2011 originated from India.

"According to international reports, the total email traffic worldwide categorised as spam is about 75-80 per cent, in the year 2011. The share of spam e-mails originating from India is about 5-6 per cent of the total worldwide spam email traffic," Minister of State for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

He added that though the Indian government has not conducted any study regarding the misuse of internet, various organisations across the globe have published reports on internet security covering aspects like spam e-mails.

Junk mails from malware-infected computers, selling counterfeit or illicit goods, generally contain malicious links to another false website. Due to the nature of IT and cyber space offering anonymity and not restricted by geographical boundaries, the problem of spam mails could be minimised but cannot be eliminated completely.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), in coordination with the industry and service providers, is working towards disablement of "spam bots" located in India.

Compromised computer systems known as "spam bots" are largely responsible for generating majority of spam mail traffic. Section 66A of the Act provides for punishment for sending spam or unsolicited e-mail messages from communication services.

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Cyberwar is more ugly than we thought

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The ongoing uncertainty about who's to blame for Stuxnet and mistaken assumptions from the investigation and reports theorizing Russian hackers had attacked an Illinois water utility last month– show that we may be technologically ready to integrate solidly damaging digital attacks with attacks using bombs or bullets.

More clearly they show that we don't know what to expect from cyberwar, even after years of being involved in at least two– one in which the U.S. has failed to stop the high-volume data thieves working for China's military, the other mixing murder, malware, bombings and sabotage in Iran.

The only thing obvious so far is that even when U.S. cyberwar capabilities vastly outmatch those of the opponent (Iran), victory is far from guaranteed.

The ongoing tussle with Iran shows we're even uncertain that full-out cyberwar would give any country the leverage to make an enemy change its behavior, or its stance on an important issue.

The ongoing scandal with Chinese data thieves and the mix-up with the Illinois water utility makes it clear the U.S. isn't even sure of its ability to keep its digital infrastructure from being invaded, or even know for sure when it has been.

It's not hard to believe we're on the cusp of a new era of cyberwar; it is hard to be confident that will be an improvement in either the destructiveness of real war or that the U.S. will be as strong in cyberspace as it is in the real world.

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Kapil Sibal's web censorship: Indian govt wanted 358 items removed, says Google

NEW DELHI: Google has received government requests for removal of 358 items from its services, including YouTube and Orkut, during the January-June period, according to a report by the internet search giant.

As many as 255 item removal requests cited the government criticism as the reason, said the Google Transparency Report. The government had asked Google to remove 236 items from Orkut and 19 items from YouTube for the same reason, it added.

Other reasons include defamation (39 requests),privacy and security (20 requests), impersonation (14 requests), hate speech (8 requests), pornography (3 requests) and national security (1 request).

As much as 51 per cent of the total requests were partially or fully complied with.

The information assumes significance in the backdrop of the raging controversy over the screening of content on social networking sites. Communications and IT Minister Kapil Sibal has asked them to screen derogatory, defamatory and inflammatory content about political leaders and religion.

According to the report, Orkut topped the list of products for which content/item removal requests were received with 264 requests.

Google received requests from the state and the local law enforcement agencies to remove YouTube videos that displayed protests against social leaders or used offensive language in reference to religious leaders.

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ICAI bars 2 auditors linked with Satyam scam for life

NEW DELHI: Two auditors involved in the multi-croreSatyam fraud have been barrred from attesting financial statements for life, apart from facing a financial penalty, by auditing regulator Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI). However, inquiry against top two audit partners of Price Waterhouse - S Gopalakrishnan and Srinivas Talluri - is yet to come to a conclusion.

Chintapatla Ravindranath and P Siva Prasad - who worked for Lovelock & Lewes (an affiliate of Pricewaterhouse India) - were audit managers who performed the statutory financial audit of Satyam Computers between April 2001 to September 2008 on behalf of Pricewaterhouse India.

The duo's names have been removed from the members' register of ICAI permanently, which means they cannot attest financial statements for life. Also they have been slapped with a financial penalty of Rs 5 lakh each, which is the maximum penalty permissible under law. Sources say this is perhaps the first time when the action involves both permanent de-rostering and also a financial penalty.

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'Why censor Facebook when you don't censor Sunny Leone?'

Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) young leader Anurag Singh Thakur wonders why the government wants to censor social media like Facebook when it is not "censoring Sunny Leone", an Indo-Canadian porn performer who is a rage on the popular television show Bigg Boss.

"Why do they want to censor Facebook, when they don't censor Sunny Leone," Thakur asked a day after Communications Minister Kapil Sibal advocated screening of inflammatory or offensive content on social networking sites.

"Thousands of children are searching for her on internet and getting connected to porn sites," Thakur told IANS on the sidelines of a conference on effective legislatures organised by PRS Legislative Research.

On Tuesday Congress leader and Lok Sabha MP Shashi Tharoor who had Tuesday "rejected" censorship for socal media, however, said that after an expostulation from his colleague Kapil Sibal he felt some restriction was needed as Indian politics and society was not as mature as in the West.

"I talked to Kapil Sibal, he told me that there were inflammatory images of gods, goddesses, prophets. When I saw those, I felt there is a problem. Free speech in India is not the same as in the West," he said at the conference.

"If certain people see these images, it can cause violence, we don't have a democracy so mature that we can ignore such things. So certain amount of restraint is necessary," he said.

Sibal had Tuesday said the government will not allow social networking sites to host "objectionable" content and will take steps to screen and remove these.

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Alert sounded for Goa beaches ahead of New Year

PANAJI: Goa's popular beaches are put on a alert following specific inputs regarding terror threats to the Western Coast, ahead of Christmas and New Year festivities, police said today.

The State Information and Publicity department in its release issued today said prohibitory orders under section 144 of the CrPC have been imposed in North Goa district.

The alert is based on the "prevailing situation in the country, intelligence inputs regarding terrorist threat(s) to the Western coast of India and possibility of the anti-social elements, with an intention of committing crime, striking Goa.

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India: Possible Misuse Of New TECHINT Capabilities

Since the Indo-Pakistan conflict in the Kargil heights in 1999, there has been a major increase in the Technical Intelligence (TECHINT) capabilities of the Indian security community, which comprises the intelligence agencies of the Government of India and the intelligence divisions of the State Police.

A new organization — initially called the National Technical Facilities Organisation (NTFO) and subsequently renamed the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) — has come up to focus exclusively on the collection of TECHINT. It is somewhat — but not totally — similar to the National Security Agency (NSA) of the USA.

However, whereas the NSA comes under the control of the US Defence Secretary and is headed by a serving military officer of the rank of Lt. Gen, whose appointment by the President is subject to confirmation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, the head of the NTRO, called Chairman, is taken on rotation from the Intelligence Bureau (IB), the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

Whereas the head of the NSA is a serving officer, the Chairmen of the NTRO have come from a hotch-potch background — not found fit to head the organization to which they originally belonged, but sought to be placated by being made the chief of the NTRO with a fixed tenure. The selection process is not subject to review or scrutiny by any external mechanism — either of the Parliament or outside it.

There is a greater possibility of the political misuse of a technical intelligence organization than of a human intelligence organization. They, therefore, have to be subject to even more strict external controls than HUMINT organizations. The dangers of misuse have increased due to the easy availability of modern snooper technology and gadgets. When one was totally dependent on landline telephones for internal communications, the scope for misuse was limited, but mobile technology has placed in the hands of not only the State, but also non-state actors — terrorists, insurgents, organized crime groups, narcotics smugglers, corporate and political rivals — immense possibilities of snooping on the State, on each other and among themselves.

In India, the absence of effective external controls over organizations having the capability for snooping facilitates the misuse of the capabilities for purposes not connected with national security and for besmirching the well-earned reputation of innocent citizens, who find themselves without any defence because they do not know and understand what the hell has been going on.

It is important for the Government to go into this matter and establish an architecture of legal and procedural safeguards to ensure that our TECHINT capabilities are used only against suspected wrong-doers and not against innocent citizens — either consciously or unconsciously.

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Apple vs Samsung ruling: Secret data leaked

A US court error offered a brief glimpse at information that Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics have tried to shield from the public during their high-stakes patent litigation.

The material appears to be less important for what it says about the companies than what it reveals about efforts to keep court proceedings secret.

In denying Apple's bid to stop Samsung from selling its Galaxy smartphone and tablets in the United States, US District Judge Lucy Koh's ruling inadvertently included details she had intended to black out. The judge's staff quickly realized the error, sealed the electronic document and posted a redacted version four hours later.

The fuller version, which Reuters obtained while it was publicly available, did not expose the technical inner workings of the iPad -- or anything close. Rather, it contained internal company analysis about the smartphone market, as well as some details about Apple's patent licensing relationships with other tech companies.

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Govt faceoff brewing with Facebook, others

NEW DELHI: Tension is brewing once again between the government and internet and social media companies over the telecom and IT ministry's demands to screen user content and remove offensive material before it is uploaded.

Sources said over the last three months the government has been in talks with these firms to put in place a monitoring mechanism. On Monday, telecom & IT minister Kapil Sibal met executives from the Indian units of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook to discuss the issue, but no solution was in sight.

"The Indian government doesn't believe in censorship," Sibal said in response to a query from TOI and ruled out any coercion. "It believes in self-regulation," he added. Officials, however, said the issue was proving difficult to be sorted out. The executives were shown content which could hurt religious sensibilities and obscene images of Indian political leaders.
The New York Times reported that about six weeks ago Sibal called legal representatives from the top internet service providers and Facebook into his office and showed them a Facebook page that maligned Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
NYT reported that Yahoo, Facebook and Microsoft did not respond immediately to calls for comment, and a Google spokesperson said the company had no comment on the issue. Facebook said earlier this year it had more than 25 million users in India. Google has over 100 million users in the country.

The demand of the government comes after rules were issued by the ministry in April asking internet service providers to delete information posted on websites that officials or private citizens deemed disparaging or harassing. Last year, the government battled with BlackBerry's manufacturer, Research In Motion, threatening to shut the company's service off in India if it did not allow government officials greater access to BlackBerry messenger messages.

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Phishers’ Roving Eyes Target Indian Educational Institutes

Recently, Symantec observed a phishing website that spoofed a popular email service brand. There wasn’t much to ponder on the phishing page or even with the brand that it was spoofing. Also, phishing websites attacking email service brands are not uncommon. But, the domain name that was used in hosting the phishing site was what made this particular phishing attempt interesting.

The phishing site’s domain name belonged to a popular government educational institute in India. Phishers are known for compromising legitimate websites and hosting their phishing sites on them. However, websites belonging to government, military, or educational institutes are usually more secure and are seldom compromised.

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Phishers Piggyback on Indian Websites

Contributors: Avdhoot Patil, Ayub Khan, and Dinesh Singh

Have Indian websites become a safe haven for phishers? To better understand, let’s explore how phishers create a phishing site. There are several strategies phishers frequently use: hosting their phishing site on a newly registered domain name, compromising a legitimate website and placing their phishing pages in them, or hosting their phishing site using a web hosting service.
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Your smartphone would be extra smart for all wrong reasons

Beware your smartphone may have some app installed in it, which might be sending your personal information to some unknown person
As technology goes to a new high, the perennial issue of privacy gets murkier. Even a small device like mobile phone could put you at risk. These ubiquitous cellphones could keep us under constant surveillance. According to a report from ConsumerAffairs.com, recently, Democratic US Senator for Minnesota, Al Franken, ordered an investigation into mobile software maker Carrier IQ after it was learnt that the company tracks and transmits personal information of the phone user- iPhones and Androids, without their knowing about it, through installed software. The company officially denied the charge.

Critics point out that given humongous sales of smartphones in India, and the weak surveillance systems in the country, Indian might also be at the risk of being monitored by some unauthorised people.

According to the report, “AT&T, Sprint, HTC, and Samsung have all confirmed that that their mobile phones integrate the Carrier IQ software.”
The software encrypts all sensitive data of the users, without informing them, including the location of the user, call records, letters typed while texting or browsing. All these personal data is then eventually sent back to the companies.
In its recent exposure, WikiLeaks released documents showing that two Indian companies, Delhi based Shoghi, which monitors GSM communications and SMS keyword spotting and Indore-based Cleartrail Technologies which provides interception, analytic solution, and mass monitoring of IP among others. It tracks all the information of the people.

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BSNL website gets hacked again

I wonder if it is much of a surprise for us to learn that the official website of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has been hacked, yet again, by the Pakistan Cyber Army.

And no, it isn’t the first time. The website had gotten hacked a couple of months ago, too, by the same outfit, stealing all the sensitive data like names, email addresses and phone numbers of the subscribers, claiming that the details were safe with them and they just wanted the government organization to better their security.

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Online tutoring-cum-looting advertisements duping people

If you come across advertisements saying you will be trained online to be a tutor, better cross-check the company’s credentials to avoid being hoodwinked into losing money.

In what seems to be a scam involving many metros in the country, many people are allegedly being duped by advertisements promising them the moon.

The victims are using the consumer complaints forum to share how they lost their money to such companies. They made advance payments but did not get what they were promised against the payment.
The companies’ modus operandi is as follows: When you call the phone numbers mentioned in the advertisements, they send you a profile of their company via e-mail. The profile says the company trains people to be tutors for both Indian and foreign students. Once you show interest, the company asks you to transfer an initial amount of `4,500 to a bank account.This is followed by telephonic interviews, during which they ask you to transfer additional amounts.

The companies’ profile says that the tutor will have to teach subjects like maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, English, History, Geography, Statistics, Economics or Computer Science to American students online.

The companies promise that the aspiring tutors would get job placement with salaries ranging from `14,000 to `18,000 for part-time jobs, and `26,000-`32,000 for full-time jobs.

The victim from Bangalore said she ended up losing `7,500, paid in two instalments.

“I was initially asked to deposit `4,500. Later, a person who claimed to be an HR person for an online company linked with Study Time, asked me to speak directly to one person named Rahul, who asked me to deposit another sum of `3,000.,” she said.

“I waited for 30 working days as asked by them. When that period was over in mid-November, I tried to get in touch with Rahul. But he sounded reluctant to speak to me. And after repeated efforts to know from him what happened, he began threatening me, saying that I should not call him,” she added.

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Cops nab two for credit card fraud

December 5, 2011, Hyderabad

The Cyber Crime Police on Sunday arrested two persons by busting a credit card fraud gang and seized two gold coins weighing about 50 grams, one 32'' Sony TV, one Samsung mobile phone, gym equipment and Rs 35,000 in cash.

Cops said that the modus operandi of the accused would be to collect confidential data of credit card holders, including card number, phone numbers and other personal details, while identifying themselves as bank agents and misuse it for online shopping.

A team of cyber crime cops led by ACP K. Chitti Babu nabbed the accused — Venigalla Raju, 31, an unemployed youth from Ashoknagar in BHEL and Tulla Sunil Kumar, 28, who works with a travel Agency and is a resident of Saibhagwan Colony in BHEL, Ramachandrapu-ram on Sunday.

After gathering details, the accused would call up the customer care of the respective bank and register their phone number in the name of original credit card holder. As they provide all the card details without any suspicion the bank obliges their request.

Later they would create Email IDs in the name of credit card holders and shop online after registering this email ID, on websites such as ebay.com.

While shopping online they furnish their phone number and receive products purchased from the courier service themselves, by showing fake ID cards created in the name of credit card holders.

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BJP to create awareness on misuse of internet by children

NAGPUR: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has intensified its drive against misuse of information technology (IT) by youngsters and is going all out to create awareness about it. The party's IT wing has organized a seminar on the darker side of social networking site for youngsters.

Abhinandan Palsapure, IT convener of Nagpur BJP, said youngsters are being exposed to pornography at a very young age, which is causing a lot of problems in society. "Many parents give mobiles to their children in middle school. Once I checked the mobiles of class VIII students and was shocked to find that most of them had stored nude pictures. Even if we want to give mobiles to our kids the storage space should be minimum. We should periodically check their mobiles."

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Cyber attacks on government websites: India goes on offensive against cyber rogues

NEW DELHI: A barrage of cyber attacks on government websites is compelling the government to develop a counter strategy to deal with countries that are behind these assaults. Government officials suspect Pakistani and Chinese hackers for being responsible for most of these attacks, and have asked security agencies to jointly map out the cyber infrastructure of neighbouring countries as part of a 'cyber preparedness' strategy.

These agencies have been asked to study the web security layout of 'suspect countries', as knowledge of security standards, as well as software and encryption capabilities is required for unleashing a counter attack. The mapping of cyber systems of other countries, including their internet gateways, routers, IT system layouts, and web routing patterns, was discussed at a meeting of top intelligence officials held last month.

Hackers are individuals who generally act in their personal capacity. But IT security experts believe that most of the recent attacks on official websites are state sponsored.
India has been on the receiving end of cyber strikes of late. Last month, investigators found details of hackers infiltrating Indian government servers and using them to attack computer networks of third countries. Just prior to that, computer systems of the ministries of home and external affairs, National Security Council and other government departments were attacked in a coordinated fashion.

In July, hackers from abroad targeted the Delhi airport, resulting in check-in counters of all airlines becoming non-operational for hours. Other recent victims include PSUs Oil and Natural Gas Corp and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, and telecom regulator Trai.

Security company McAfee in August said it had uncovered the 'biggest ever cyber attacks to date' where hackers in a five-year campaign stole information from governments and companies located in the US, Taiwan, India, South Korea, Vietnam and Canada among others.


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Beware of holiday shipping email scams

I received an email from UPS about a delivery problem with a package. It asked me to download a label. Is this some sort of scam?

Unfortunately, yes. You should delete the email without opening it and do not download the attached file.

This time of year, fake package delivery emails are more prevalent than at any other time of the year. The subject lines of these bogus emails usually say something like "UPS package delivery problem, UPS 34898239-a." The senders also use DHL, FedEx and the USPS with the same message.

These scammers count on the fact that although normally only a small percentage of the recipients of the emails may be expecting packages, around the holidays with so many purchases and gifts ordered from the Internet, many people who usually do not receive packages may assume that the delivery problem notice is for a gift. They unsuspectingly open the emails and the attachments.

Alarming messages that require immediate action such as "Your account will be suspended," "Your parcel or prize will be returned" or any other tactic which compels you to open a fraudulent email or attachment is from a scammer, not a shipper. The emails can contain a Trojan horse that can invade your computer system and steal personal information including credit card and social security numbers or account passwords.

An unusual request in an email that may alert you to criminal intentions is a request for financial information, funds or personal information in exchange for the delivery of a package. According to FedEx, "FedEx does not request, via unsolicited mail or e-mail, payment or personal information in return for goods in transit or in FedEx custody."

The problem is so pervasive that major shippers address it on their websites.

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Selling Surveillance to Dictators

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International surveillance companies are based in the more technologically sophisticated countries, and they sell their technology on to every country of the world. This industry is, in practice, unregulated. Intelligence agencies, military forces and police authorities are able to silently, and on mass, and secretly intercept calls and take over computers without the help or knowledge of the telecommunication providers. Users’ physical location can be tracked if they are carrying a mobile phone, even if it is only on stand by.
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millions of smartphones are secretly monitoring the key presses, geographic locations, and received messages of its users.

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In a YouTube video posted on Monday, Trevor Eckhart showed how software from a Silicon Valley company known as Carrier IQ recorded in real time the keys he pressed into a stock EVO handset, which he had reset to factory settings just prior to the demonstration. Using a packet sniffer while his device was in airplane mode, he demonstrated how each numeric tap and every received text message is logged by the software.
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Checking out women "for sexual purposes" was just one of the ways Welsh police have breached people's data protection rights.

Nightmarish threat from Welsh Police.
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"Apart from looking up prospective girlfriends on police records, the cops couldn't resist prying into the lives of possible housing tenants for anything they should worry about, as well as going through family members' information and even passing on some data to third parties."


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Hackers expose security flaws in BlackBerry Playbook

Three hackers say they have exploited a vulnerability in Research In Motion’s PlayBook tablet to gain root access to the device, a claim that could damage the BlackBerry maker’s hard-won reputation for security.

Root access means a user has permission to alter any file or program on a device and can control hardware functions.

In a response to queries, RIM said it is investigating the claim, and if a “jailbreak” is confirmed will release a patch to plug the hole.

The three hackers — who identify themselves as xpvqs, neuralic and Chris Wade — plan to release their data within a week as a tool called DingleBerry.

Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems are frequently attacked by users who want to run programs that have not been authorised by the manufacturers, but breaches of RIM’s software are more rare.

The PlayBook runs on a different operating system than RIM’s current BlackBerry smartphones. However, the QNX system will be incorporated into its smartphones starting next year.

A source told Reuters that RIM had previously closed a PlayBook vulnerability that allowed a pre-loaded racing game to force a user to watch an introductory video.

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Mahesh Bhatt's hacker abuses KRK, Poonam Pandey, Sunny Leone

Celebrities across the globe are facing serious trouble owing to their accounts being hacked!

It's been happening for a while. First it was imposters who would create fake profiles of celebrities on social networking and micro-blogging sites calling it authentic, thus deceiving the fans and causing trauma to the celeb themselves.

Now its come to the email and other accounts being hacked directly! This is all the more troublesome considering; the messages go out from the celebs' end addressed to other celebrities from his/her verified account!

Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt is the latest victim to this hacking. According to Mahesh Bhatt, his Twitter account was hacked on Tuesday Nov 29th and foul-mouthed messages were sent from his id to attention grabbing celebs like Kamaal Khan, Poonam Pandey and Sunny Leone.

It read "@kamaalrkhan @SunnyLeone @iPoonampandey #AapC******Hain"
Mahesh Bhatt clarified, "Someone has hacked my account and used it to abuse Kamal Khan and few others. This is dangerous."

Bhatt is not the first to get the hack attack. Few days back a highly controversial mail was sent across to the Indian media from the alleged PR of Sayali Bhagat which had accused an actor like Amitabh Bachchan of indecent behaviour towards the actress. The PR firm alleged that the mail was sent to them by Sayali herself which the actress denied completely. The actress claimed her email account was hacked and she had nothing to do with what was being said.

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