Internet Leading To Increase In Cyber Crime,says Parliament Study

New Delhi: The hacking and defacing of websites in India has “highly perturbed” a Parliamentary Committee which examined the issue of cyber crimes and cyber security and found that 3,911 India’s websites were defaced or hacked upto June 2013 and majority of these which was around 2667 out of 3911 attacks were the ‘.in’ domain whose servers were in India.

In its 52nd Report, the Standing Committee on Information Technology tabled in Parliament on Wednesday found that while the usage of internet has facilitated transparency and greater accountability, it has at the same time led to increasing forms of cyber crime and cyber threat each day with newer challenges for data protection and security.

This assumes significance since the internet user base has increased to 100 million and total broadband subscriber base has increased to 12.69 million. The target for broadband connections in the current year is 22 million.

Today the country has 134 major ISPs, 10 million registered domain names of one million are  ‘.in’  domains and over 260 data centers all over the country.

In its 83-page report, the Committee chaired by Rao Inderjit Singh expressed concern over the consistent increase in cyber crime cases in the country during the last five years.
           

It said according to the record of  cyber-crime data maintained by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), a total of 420, 966, 1791 and 2876 Cyber Crime cases were registered under the Information Technology Act during the years 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 respectively.

The report said that a total of 276, 356, 422 and 601 cases were registered under Cyber Crime related sections of Indian Penal Code (IPC)  during  2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012. respectively.

The Committee found it disquieting that the quantum of financial loss and privacy related cases in the country due to cyber attack and fraud in the last few years have increased.

The Report said that according to the Reserve Bank of India in the last five years though the number of fraud cases reported by Banks on account of ATM Debit Cards/Credit Cards and Internet have decreased from 15018 in 2010 to 8322 in 2012, yet the amount involved had increased from Rs 40.48 crore to /Rs 52.67 crore in 2012.

However, the Committee was of the view that the reported number of cases involving financial fraud due to cyber related cases is just the tip of the iceberg as a number of cases go unnoticed and unreported.

The Committee expressed unhappiness over the involvement of too many agencies maintaining separate data on cyber crime cases and felt that there should be one single, centralized cell or agency to deal with all cases of cyber crime or threat in the country.

Having one agency to look after cyber crimes and cyber threats, the Committee said would not only help the Department in knowing the pattern of the crime but also prevent recurrence of same kind of crimes with newer strategies.

It felt that the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DIETY) should work in this direction and apprise the Committee of the action taken in this regard.
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Source: Secondary

Study shows, Cybercrime is the Part of Sophisticated Online Economy

The dark world of cyber crime has evolved from one of rogue individuals to a functioning market-based economy with its ups and downs, code of conduct and "innovation."

A study by Rand Corp. and commissioned by the security firm Juniper Networks found a well-organised, multibillion-dollar underground economy that has become "a playground of financially driven, highly organized and sophisticated groups."

The evolution of cyber crime creates new challenges for security professionals trying to protect computer networks, says Nawaf Bitar, Juniper's general manager for security.

"We have long suspected that cyber criminals were sophisticated and that they had an organizational structure, but no one had studied this,"

"The success of this market is driven by accelerated economics, and the way to address this is through economics."

The report says the black markets "are growing in size and complexity" and that this activity "mirrors the normal evolution of a free market, with both innovation and growth."

Juniper's security vice president said this cyber underground has all the characteristics of an economy, including its own currencies -- chiefly cryptography payment forms such as Bitcoin.

She said the underground economy is characterized by specialization and "resilience," so that if one market participant leaves, another steps up.

"We saw this when (the black market bazaar) Silk Road went down, and within a day other participants started filling that gap," Callahan said.

"It's one of those signs this is a mature economy."
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Source: Secondary

India is still dealing like an infant with cyber crimes, says Expert

India is still in infancy in the field of cyber crimes and police, prosecutors and lawyers are not well-versed in handling them as well as digital evidence, a Cyber crime expert said here today.

"Information Technology Act in India is of recent origin and the officials like police, prosecutors and lawyers are not well versed in handling cyber crimes as well as digital evidence, since these have recently emerged and the younger generation is more tech savvy," said Dr J R Gaur, Principal Scientific Officer (Life Sciences), Bureau of Police Research and Development while speaking at seminar at Amity University.

He said the pattern of crime has changed over a period of time and the commission of crime by scientific methods makes it difficult for the executioners to bring perpetrators behind the bars.

"In cyber crimes, India is still in infancy. ATM frauds are increasing. Effective forensic investigation at the scene of crime can bring criminals to book. The importance of the knowledge of forensic evidences specially traces of hair, fibre etc found at the site, have to be ingrained in the officials dealing with cyber crimes," he said.

Stressing that banks need to take steps to install modern security and vigilance gadgets and equipments including the CCTV cameras in the ATMs since most of the times, they record low resolution images which are difficult to identify once enlarged.

Addressing the seminar, Rakshit Tandon-Advisor, Cyber Crime Cell, Gurgaon Police and CEO A&R Info Solutions Pvt said there has been a significant rise of 60 per cent in Cyber Crimes from 2011 to 2012 in NCR.

"Maximum number of perpetrators in cyber crimes are very young, who are unaware of law and proudly proclaim themselves as 'Ethical Hackers'," said Tandon.

He said that in 2011, over 1,630 perpetrators for cyber crime were arrested and out of these, 928 were college going students and over 65 were school going children.

Stressing that "cyber laws in India needs transformation, he said at present, under Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008, the accused is punished for imprisonment, which may extend to three years or with fine, which may extend to five lakh rupees or both, irrespective of the magnitude of the crime committed.

"Cyber Laws have to be made stringent to restrict youngsters from indulging into them," said Tandon.
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Source: Secondary

Lakhs of Indian Computers Infected

NEW DELHI: Over 42 lakh computer systems, including mobile phones, were infected in India by June last year with 'botnet' malware being used for various kinds of cyber crimes.

As per the data shared by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) with other government departments, the botnet infected systems in the country was 25,915 in 2007 which peaked to about 65 lakh in 2012.

The number of botnet infected system grew rapidly and reached over 60 percent in first half of 2013.

"The bot infected systems are under control of cyber criminals. The bots steal sensitive information such as online credentials, credit card numbers, email id and passwords which cause data loss and financial loss to victims," CERT-in said in on setting up botnet cleaning centre in the country.

The term 'bot' is short for robot. Cyber criminals distribute malicious software that can turn a computer into a bot. These bots can be networked together as 'botnet' that can perform automated tasks over the Internet, without the owners of the devices coming to know about it.

Criminals use botnets to send out spam email messages, spread viruses, attack computers and servers, and commit other kinds of crime and fraud. It also slows down speed of infected computer or mobile phone.

Cyber criminals use Internet to plant malicious software or programmes in a system. In India there are about 210 million Internet connections which include both mobile phones and computers.
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Source: Secondary

Protect Your Smartphone From Cyber Criminals

There was a time only when criminals with a face were on the prowl. This class included people who snatched gold chains, picked pockets or stole cars. But with wealth management going online, they have become faceless, at least until they are tracked down. In fact, until a few years ago, tracking these cyber criminal was not so difficult as a hacker could be traced back to his computer. But that is not the case any more.

A report published in the Business Line today said this is due to a software which spoofs IPs and hence cover the hacker’s identify as well as the place of his origin. The attacks by cyber criminals just got more intense as, with increasing popularity of smartphones, the number of viruses and malware that can be used to hack also surged.

“A sample study carried out by our company in eight cities shows that more than one lakh smartphones are subjected to cyber attacks every day in India,”Ritesh Chopra, country sales manager of anti-virus manufacturer Norton, has been quoted as saying in the report.

There are various types of risks. Such attacks not only affects the hardware slowing down the phone, but also your exposes your personal data to the criminals. Many of us store details of our bank accounts and other such personal financial data on our smartphone these days. But unlike PCs and laptops, most of these smartphones don’t have anti-virus software installed. Since many use social media via smartphones, identity theft too becomes an added risk.

So what should you do? One way to deal with this issue is to get rid of the smartphone and use a low-end phone instead. But if that’s not possible, you could take a few steps to extenuate the risk. For instance, don’t have your internet switched on your phone when you are not using it. Also, be cautious while using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, since these are relatively more vulnerable to such attacks. And finally, you could install antivirus software for your smartphone. 

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Source: Secondary