Indian-origin student charged with hacking in UK

An Indian-origin student of Liverpool John Moores University in the UK has been charged with hacking into the varsity's computer system, police sources on Wednesday. Charantoor Kultar Singh - 22, was arrested by police from the North West Hub of the Police Central e-Crime Unit on April 30 over the suspected hacking. 

He has now been charged with unauthorised access to a computer system and unauthorised impairment of a computer programme...............


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More than 5 in every 10 Indian children bullied online: Survey

Over half of the Indian children who surf Internet face cyber bullying -- getting threatened or being harassed online -- a Microsoft study has found. 

According to Microsoft's 'Global Youth Online Behavior Survey' of 25 countries, India ranked third with 53 per cent of respondents (children aged between 8-17) saying they have been bullied online, behind China (70 per cent) and Singapore (58 per cent). 

Cyber bullying can be defined as use of technology to harass, threaten, embarrass or target another person..............


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State-led Hacking Cost Company 1 Billion Euros

A British company suffered lost revenues of €1.0 billion ($1.25 billion) because of a state-sponsored cyber attack against its computer systems, according to the head of the United Kingdom’s inland security agency. The hit was said to be suffered through intellectual-property loss and from “commercial disadvantage in contractual negotiations.”........................


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Mantralaya fire: Data from burnt computers can be retrieved: Expert

The Mantralaya inferno last week devoured over 3.5 crore pages in government files. While 2 lakh of these pages were digitized, what is worrying the government is that fire also damaged 2000 computers in which the matter was stored. But there is some hope.............

In Maharashtra alone, daily 40-50 cyber crimes are reported but seldom converted into FIR because of the lack of investigation techniques. It is not just the metros where cyber crimes are reported. There has been staggering growth of cyber crimes in rural parts too...............

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Cyber criminals may have siphoned off 2 bn euros from 60 banks

Cyber criminals may have attempted to siphon off anywhere between 60 million euros and 2 billion euros in fraudulent transfers from at least 60 banks globally, a McAfee and Guardian Analytics study said.

The study highlighted a highly sophisticated, multi-tiered, global financial fraud ring that is comprised of at least a dozen groups use active and passive automated transfer systems to steal high value amounts from high balance accounts...........

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Hacker should pay Johansson, other celebrities $150,000, feds urge

Federal prosecutors want a man who hacked the email accounts of celebrities and their associates and obtained naked images of Christina Aguilera, Renee Olstead and Scarlett Johansson to serve 71 months in prison and pay the celebrities about $150,000 in compensation.

Christopher Chaney, 35, of Jacksonville, Fla., whose pleaded guilty in Los Angeles federal court to nine counts of computer hacking, hacked almost daily for two years into email accounts of 50 people in the entertainment industry.

Prosecutors in a sentencing memorandum say Chaney took naked images of Aguilera from her stylist's email account, Olstead's from her email stream and Johansson's from emails she sent to her then husband Ryan Reynolds. He forwarded them to another hacker and two celebrity websites, who made them public. They remain in wide ciriculation...........

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US charges 24 people in massive hacking sting

US law enforcement officials on Tuesday said 24 suspected hackers had been arrested in a sting operation spanning four continents that targeted online financial fraud of stolen credit card and bank information. 

In a two-year investigation, FBI agents posed as hackers on Internet forums, watching as other hackers swapped methods for breaching data security walls and creating fake credit cards that would work for Internet and in-person purchases............
 
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MI-5 chief warns of "astonishing," industrial-scale state-sponsored cybercrime

Anyone paying any attention to digital security at all knows the whole universe of cybercrime outgrew its hacker roots years ago, when it was largely taken over by organized crime gangs, primarily in the former Soviet Union, China and the United States.

Now it's outgrown organized crime as well, according to Jonathan Evans, head of MI-5, the British internal counter-intelligence and security unit that functions like a combination of the FBI and CIA in the United States.

Despite the resources and experience of a world-class intelligence operation such as MI-5, Britain is all but overwhelmed by complex, persistent, attacks that are anything but trivial early experiments into the potential for cyberespionage and warfare...............

Vulnerabilities in the internet are being exploited aggressively not just by criminals but also by states. The extent of what is going on is astonishing.

State-sponsored cybercrime isn't conducted by small teams assembled for a specific attack, as many organized criminal gangs operate........................

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Trojan Milicenso malware affects printers worldwide

Security researchers from antivirus company Symantec have pointed out a malware programme called Trojan.Milicenso that has infected printers connected to Windows PCs worldwide and is causing the automatic printing of pages full of garbled data................


If figures provided by Symantec are to believed, India and the U.S. are the worst hit regions followed by Europe and South America...........


Symantec says the Trojan.Milicenso can hit an infected computer via various ways, such as malicious e-mail attachments or visiting sites with malicious scripts...................



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Hackers targeting Indian banks with advanced SpyEye, Zeus malaware variants

After targeting financial institutions in Europe, hackers are now increasingly targeting Indian financial institutions with the latest variants of malaware like SpyEye and Zeus to siphon larger amounts of money from bank accounts, Japanese security company Trend Micro has cautioned.....

The new software allows the criminal to siphon money out while he sleeps. It could significantly increase the number of hacked accounts and the speed with which they are drained..........

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Government must fight off 100 cyber attacks a month

The government’s IT agency deals with about 100 cyber-attacks a month, attempts to retrieve information from the government’s online infrastructure.

Cedric Mallia, who heads Mita’s agency’s computer emergency response team (Cert) that monitors government servers, said most of the attacks originated from foreign sources................

The main theme that featured in several discussions held during this weeklong event was the adoption of cross-boundary cooperation to achieve the universal goal of cyber-security......

We’re living in a hypo-connective world, where we’re connected to online systems all the time, everywhere. The main challenge remains to continue providing security and protect internet users without removing these connectivity benefits...............

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.IN domain most sought after for Indian phishing attacks

Symantec’s latest analysis of the cyber threat landscape has revealed the rise of .in URLs in spam.

Last year, the India domain (.in) ranked 10th in the distribution list, while it has now jumped to the 5th position. Furthermore, 25 per cent of phishing attacks on Indian brands used the .in domain.

In May 2012, Symantec Intelligence also observed a whopping 187 per cent rise over the previous month in phishing attacks on Indian brands, all of which were in the banking sector. While these originated around the world, Hyderabad hosted the second highest number of phishing attacks on Indian brands. Hyderabad also tops the list of cities for this month that hosted phishing sites in India of non-Indian brands followed by Nashik, New Delhi and Bangalore on the 3rd and 4th place respectively................

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Cyber bullying on rise among teens

He's big, he's bad, and he's unnerving to face. We all have that terrifying bully at school and the characteristic brow-beater in the playground. But today, harassment doesn't stop there. With the hoard of teens and tweens moving into cyber space, the world has another breed of bully- the cyber bully! 

Cyber bullying is essentially the persistent harassment of an individual via technology like the internet, cellphone, etc……….

The internet provides not only a vivid interface for communication, but also the much needed anonymity essential for such a form of harassment. People, inept at social interactions, use the net to vent their aggression as they don’t feel an immediate sense of threat………….. 

The IT Act, 2000 states punishment to all those publishing information which is obscene as also to any form of breach in privacy and confidentiality. The Indian Penal Code (IPC) also covers this issue……………. 

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India unblocks access to video, file-sharing sites

India has now allowed access to video and file-sharing sites, including The Pirate Bay, which were blocked earlier over the issue of Internet piracy. The Madras High Court's earlier ruling made Internet service providers (ISPs) block access to entire sites to prevent a single film from being shared online......

The order stated that only specific web addresses, URLs, carrying the pirated content should be blocked, but not the entire website................


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Your online identity matters at work

In an era where online profiles are often seen and judged before the real person, it is important to ensure that your online identity presents a good image to your prospective employers.........

Social networking sites, which were earlier considered to be a domain only for teenagers, are increasingly being used as an important tool for building professional relationships and businesses. According to a survey conducted by reppler.com (a social media monitoring website), 91% of recruiters visited a potential employee's online profile as part of the recruitment procedure and 69% rejected the applicants on the basis of the content found on their online profile. However, 68% of them also hired prospective candidates on the basis of their presence on social networking sites..........


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Social media 'could cut suicide'

Social media sites should be harnessed to help prevent suicide among young people, according to researchers................

In the past, internet sites have been criticised for encouraging self-harm. But the report says new media could instead be used to direct young people to seek help....

Now the researchers say the possible dangers posed by new media could be counteracted if the sites provided support for vulnerable young people.

They say because it is still a relatively new phenomenon, it is important to understand why internet postings can influence some young people to self-harm or take their own life.........

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Does the government need new internet surveillance powers?

Surveillance of citizens by governments is generally a bad thing. All things being equal, the more of it the worse. So regardless of the specific details of the legislation the government is going to propose in relation to the real time monitoring of Internet and mobile phone traffic data, it is something we should have a negative presumption about.....................

Whenever a new piece of cyber-surveillance is proposed, the same three issues are always brought up: terrorism, child pornography and cyber-crime. And sure enough, it is these three issues that supposedly justify the renewed intrusion this time around.

The argument that the government needs real time, rather than retrospective access to traffic data for investigating ‘ordinary decent’ cyber-crime, or even quintessentially evil child pornography is surely disingenuous. The conventional approach to crime is that one waits for a crime to take place before one tries to investigate it.................

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Is Monitoring Software an Invasion of Privacy… or is It the Smart Thing to do to Protect Your Children?

In recent years, cyber crime − a crime committed through the use of technology such as a computer or cell phone − has led to a disturbing number of tragedies, including an alarmingly high amount of teen suicides, sexual assaults and kidnappings. The Cyber Bullying Research Center reports that over 80% of teenagers use their cell phone every single day and nearly 25% of them have been the victims of bullying or sexual solicitations via this same technology.......................

Many recent news, alleged child molesting, has served cautionary tale for parents of the very real possibility that crimes against their children can occur right under their noses.

Many of these types of crimes could be intercepted and possibly prevented if the parents were able to track cell-phone activity and further monitor their child's surroundings.....................


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Are We Moving To the Cloud Yet?

Is it a good idea for you to shift your business to the cloud? Depends on which country you're talking about. Business Software Alliance (BSA), a global association of the software industry, has come out with a report on the adoption of cloud computing. While Japan and the US ranked at the top, India has been found to have a better regulatory environment for cloud computing. A host of parameters, from data privacy to privacy laws, have been used to arrive at the rankings....................

India scored 19, ahead of China and Brazil, due to a more liberal environment, and because its industry-led standards were found to be world class. India scored low on broadband deployment (which had the highest weightage in the report) and on lack of adequate clarity on intellectual property rights protection..............


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Cost of Cyber Attacks are Skyrocketing

If your company were hit with a cyber attack today, how much would it cost? The entire bill -- including costs from regulatory fines, potential lawsuits, damage to your organization's brand, and hardware/software repair, recovery and protection?

It's a question you can't ignore, as the costs of online attacks are skyrocketing. According to a 2011 study by the Ponemon Institute, the cost of cybercrime in the US could range from $1.5 million to $36.5 million annually...........

Cyber attacks, often in the form of data breaches and network intrusions, can impact operations, frequently result in lost productivity, legal expenses, third party liabilities, exposed intellectual property, and damage to a firm's reputation.............................

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