Improved Technology Increases Vulnerability To Cyber Crime, Cops

Technology has made life easier for all, but this has also increased vulnerability to cyber crime. For instance, with smartphones and easy accessibility of the internet on it, Thane cyber crime cell has seen an increase in cyber crimes.

Cyber crime includes crime done through mobile phones, social networking sites, credit and debit card transaction.

On the condition of anonymity, an officer from cyber cell said, "Though the internet was introduced to minimise time, today many people are misusing it. With young children getting access to smartphones easily, they start surfing various sites and in turn indulge in unlawful activities."

"Parents should not give mobile phones to kids unless there is some emergency," he adds.

Specifying the types of crime committed through the internet, he says, "Facebook and bank fraud casea are on the rise. People make fake profile and then lure someone for cash and for other purposes. Crimes through WhatsApp and other software are, however, very less."
                 

He added, "There was a juvenile boy who used to call on unknown number and when we identified him he accepted watching porn clips on his father's cell phone. As his father was not tech savvy, he was not aware of what his son was up to. The matter came to light when one day this boy called a random girl and asked her for sexual favours. The girl approached the police and got the boy arrested. He was later sent to remand home."

Deputy commissioner of police (cyber cell) Sudhakar Pathares said, "The cases have increased in the last three years. By the time we come up with an efficient way of detecting the culprits, they come up with the new a tactic. We are trying to curb such activities, but technology is growing at a faster rate and it is not easy to control them."

He added, "We have tracked so many cases and are trying to minimise cyber crimes, but with changing technology and new software it's a challenge. For instance, on WhatsApp allows you to seen when the person was last seen. This helps us detect some cases."


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Source: Secondary

Cyber crime can be hold in by Hackers.

RANCHI: Identifying the potential of cyber threat in future warfare, a group of ethical hackers led by cyber buff and founder National Anti-hacking Group (NAG) Vineet Kumar in partnership with Jharkhand police, state Unicef and NGO Citizen foundation launched Cyber Peace Foundation here on Saturday.

The foundation aims at creating awareness about the potential risks involved in handling of internet and internet-based services among commoners and government organizations. With widespread awareness, the group expressed confidence about the introduction of suitable legislation and norms for regulations to safeguard vital installations.

S N Pradhan, additional director general, CID, Jharkhand police, who has been instrumental in the establishment of the country's first cyber defence research cell (CDRC) in the state said cyber space is a network that integrates government and private organisations as well as individuals throwing the system open to attacks and a concerted effort was necessary to counter attacks.

          

"Many countries have engaged thousands of hackers just to gate crash into vital information from government installations, which have no practical wall to be protected once they are working on the platform of internet communication," he said. Further, explaining the potential threat, Vineet said as part of a project taken up by CDRC Jharkhand, as many as one lakh computers, most of them being used by cyber cafes and private individuals were found to be afflicted with 'botnet', which is a term used in the cyber world for robotic hackers.

"Since the number of pirated software being used in Jharkhand is quite high, the vulnerability of the computers is also high and they could be easily compromised by hackers to attack on any vital installation within or outside the country," he said.

While the CDRC received huge number of complains related to credit and debit card fraud, impersonation on social networking sites and webcast of explicit material without consent, the cyber peace foundation expressed concern about bigger threats ahead. "Though we do not have evidence due to limitations of investigation conducted, experts of cyber world are almost confident that the historical failure of northern grid in July 2012 was masterminded by hackers who gained access to the control system," said Pradhan.

To begin with, the foundation has launched a cyber peace month for which a campaign vehicle was flagged off by Pradhan and state head, Jharkhand Unicef chief Job Zachariah, who joined the drive in consideration of children who fall prey to sexual offence emanating on the virtual platform. "The Prevention of Children from Sexual Offence Act, 2012 mentions punitive clause for exposing children to such contents on the internet and awareness is necessary for effective implementation of the act," he said.
To learn about Identity Theft, visit www.cibilconsultants.com
Source: Secondary

Identity Theft in India

As the cyber world unveils websites that let you live a ‘second life’, fake identities and identity thefts are fast emerging a menace giving spurt to hate mails and even serious crimes.

Identity theft remains unrecognised by many Indians, but many may already be becoming targets even without realising it, experts say.

One of the fastest growing crimes in the developed nations like United States, it is spreading in developing economies too. According to a website that monitors cyber crimes, in 2006, identity theft complaints made up thirty seven per cent (37%) of all fraud complaints.

With extensive use of social networking sites in India, the young population chatting for hours, however is unaware of the risks involved. Sharing personal information on social networking sites like Orkut, Tagged, hi5, etc. can be hazardous. The delinquents will have no difficulty in using someone’s personal information for their vested interest, cyber experts say.
                                 

There has been number of cases reported in the country where the people were cheated after sharing their personal information on Internet. Latest among them is one of a youth from Mumbai who was murdered, after pals on the net abducted and then killed him, having won his confidence through the network chatting.

“People discuss sex, try to find a dating partner or indulge in ‘cyber romance,’ falling prey to social networking sites. As a result, most of them undergo emotional abuses and have long lasting psychological effects. At least ten victims visits my clinic everyday seeking counselling on ‘abuses’ they had experienced on vast net-world,” says Dr Roma Kumar, Clinical Psychologist with Sri Ganga Ram Hospital.

“Youngsters, mostly school goers are unaware of the risk involved in sharing personal details on Internet. Some do it for fun rest to explore answers to their queries. But most of them later suffer owing to ignorance and lack of information,” she says.

“We receive 10-20 cases of identity thefts mainly on cyberfrauds monthly. The cases of cyber-crimes are increasing in the country,” says Sanjay Singh, CEO of Indian Detective Agency.

“We get number of inquiries asking us for the tips to protect against identity theft,” he adds.

“Once I got a call from a person asking me about legal proceedings pertinent to cyber crimes. He was actually duped by an imposter who posed herself as a Bollywood actress and asked him some money citing personal reasons and said that she (Imposter) would marry him, if he agrees to pay the asked amount. That person got carried away and deposited money in the bank account given to him. Later, as obvious, it was found to be a cyber fraud and he was robbed off with his money”, says G Venkatesh Rao, a Supreme Court lawyer.

“People should be careful while using networking sites. They should avoid using very personal information like mobile number, credit card and bank account detail, date of birth to avoid identity theft,” says Rao.

To learn about Identity Theft, visit- www.cibilconsultants.com
Source: Secondary

Magnet for hackers: Internet connected devices

2013 has been an eventful year in the information security space, as information became the most valuable and challenging asset for organisations while being border less and dispersed, as cloud, mobility and “bring your own device” took a stronger hold on businesses. Information security has been immensely threatened with businesses, government and individuals relying on the internet for dynamic needs and cyber criminals have devised more sophisticated methods to trap victims. Blurring boundaries between consumer and business, sophistication in enterprise attacks and dispersion of authority for security within the ecosystem has led to growing concerns over data, financial information and critical infrastructure.

The threats observed throughout the year were in line with the predictions first made by Symantec which saw conflicts between nations, organisations and individuals; using evolved social engineering techniques and cloud based attacks aimed at financial gains, IP and in some cases to bring down the critical infrastructure. Symantec’s report findings also points at India as among world’s top five countries for the highest number of incidences of cyber crime such as ransom ware, identity theft and phishing. India also witnessed a 280% increase in Bot infections, with a sizable percentage coming from cities emerging cities such as Bhubaneswar, Surat, Cochin, Jaipur, Vishakhapatnam, Indore, Kota, Ghaziabad and Mysore.

                                 

As the New Year approaches, we predict that this trend will only further increase as cyber criminals continue to employee more sophisticated and targeted techniques. They will continue to focus their attacks on data stored on the cloud vs. data stored on the network, thus putting a massive challenge for enterprises to handle. Below are Symantec’s top predictions in 2014:

Targeted attacks will increase.

In 2013, we reported on a sophisticated social engineering attack implemented at a French-based MNC who got francophoned, where the administrative assistant to a vice-president received an e-mail referencing an invoice hosted on a popular file sharing service and subsequently received a phone call from another vice-president within the company, instructing her to examine and process the invoice. However, the invoice was a fake and the vice president who spoke to her with authority was an attacker. Incidents like these were observed and we predict that in 2014, these attacks will become commonplace and attackers will further refine these targeted attack tactics to make financial gains.

Perils of social networking

It is tempting to believe that you can move to a new neighbourhood and all your old problems will go away. They don’t in real life and they won’t when it comes to social networking. Any new social network that attracts users will also attract scammers. It has been observed that individuals are increasingly choosing convenience over safety and constantly exhibiting a potentially risky behaviour online. According to the latest Norton Report 2013, 18% social media users connect with people they do not know and 61% access their social network account over unsecure Wi-Fi. Therefore it is important to protect yourself by using security best practices no matter where you are on the internet or how you connect to it .

Internet of vulnerabilities

With millions of devices connected to the internet, in 2014, they will become a magnet for hackers. Security researchers have already demonstrated attacks against smart televisions, medical equipment and security cameras. Already we’ve seen baby monitors attacked and traffic was shut down on a major tunnel in Israel, reportedly due to hackers accessing computer systems via a security camera system. Major software vendors have figured out how to notify customers and get patches for vulnerabilities to them. The companies building gadgets that connect to the internet don’t even realise they have an oncoming security problem. These systems are not only vulnerable to an attack—they also lack notification methods for consumers and businesses when vulnerabilities are discovered. Even worse, they don’t have a friendly end-user method to patch these new vulnerabilities. Given this, we are going to see new threats in ways in which we’ve never seen before.

Cyber criminals will target the weakest links

Third party consultants, suppliers and partners outside the enterprise network as well as business associates in the ecosystem will be the easy targets for attackers as they are the weakest links in the information exchange chain. This includes consultants, contractors, vendors and others who share sensitive information or even have access to the networks of large organisations and government entities. And, it has been repeatedly observed that only a few of these partners have sufficient defenses.

Watch out for dangers in the cloud

Increasingly enterprises and individuals are using public clouds to store and access data. As per the latest Norton Report 2013, 29% individuals in India and 24% across the world are already practicing this trend. And with rise in usage of these platforms for both personal and private information, it is highly likely that we will see this as an easy target for cyber-criminals to penetrate these data-rich cloud platforms for profitable motives.

To learn about Identity Theft, visit- www.cibilconsultants.com
Source: Secondary

Someone Stole you?

As the cyber world unveils websites that let you live a ‘second life’, fake identities and identity thefts are fast emerging a menace giving spurt to hate mails and even serious crimes.

Identity theft remains unrecognized by many Indians, but many may already be becoming targets even without realizing it, experts say.

One of the fastest growing crimes in the developed nations like United States, it is spreading in developing economies too. According to a website that monitors cyber crimes, in 2006, identity theft complaints made up 37 per cent of all fraud complaints.

With extensive use of social networking sites in India, the young population chatting for hours, however, is unaware of the risks involved. Sharing personal information on social networking sites like Orkut, Tagged, hi5, etc. can be hazardous. The delinquents will have no difficulty in using someone's personal information for their vested interest, cyber experts say.

There has been number of cases reported in the country where the people were cheated after sharing their personal information on Internet. Latest among them is one of a youth from Mumbai who was murdered, after pals on the net abducted and then killed him, having won his confidence through the network chatting.

“People discuss sex, try to find a dating partner or indulge in ‘cyber romance’, falling prey to social networking sites. As a result, most of them undergo emotional abuses and have long lasting psychological effects. At least ten victims visits my clinic everyday seeking counselling on 'abuses' they had experienced on vast net-world,” says Dr Roma Kumar, Clinical Psychologist with Sri Ganga Ram Hospital.

“Youngsters, mostly school goers are unaware of the risk involved in sharing personal details on Internet. Some do it for fun rest to explore answers to their queries. But most of them later suffer owing to ignorance and lack of information,” she says.

“We receive 10-20 cases of identity thefts mainly on cyber frauds monthly. The cases of cyber-crimes are increasing in the country,” says Sanjay Singh, CEO of Indian Detective Agency.

“We get number of inquiries asking us for the tips to protect against identity theft,” he adds. “Once I got a call from a person asking me about legal proceedings pertinent to cyber crimes. He was actually duped by an imposter who posed herself as a Bollywood actress and asked him some money citing personal reasons and said that she (imposter) would marry him, if he agrees to pay the asked amount. That person got carried away and deposited money in the bank account given to him. Later, as obvious, it was found to be a cyber fraud and he was robbed off with his money,” says G Venkatesh Rao, a Supreme Court lawyer.

“People should be careful while using networking sites. They should avoid using very personal information like mobile number, credit card and bank account detail, date of birth to avoid identity theft,” says Rao.

“All laws related to cyber crimes including those of identity thefts by means of transactions carried out by electronic data interchange and other means of electronic communication are contained in Information Technology Act, 2000,” he says.

“Though, harsh punishment to offenders, Protection through Internet Service Providers and generating awareness among masses can be a better solution. But personal awareness and following net-etiquette will be a permanent remedy to it,” Rao adds.

There have been many incidents of identity thefts including those of ‘Phishing’ (hoax mails) but most of them go unreported as people either do not take it seriously or are simply ignorant of the possible damage, say experts.

“I was quite disturbed after receiving credit-card bill, issued in my name and address, of more than Rs15,000. What was more surprising is that I didn't have any credit card at all. It was just a month after I applied for one with the bank,” says Vindhyachal Pandey, an executive with a telecom firm.

“Although in the year 2006 only, a total of 335 phishing incidents were reported by various National and International agencies, on an average 28 incidents in a month. There was progressive increase of phishing incidence noticed in the second half of the year," says Anirban Sen Gupta, Principal

Consultant with a consulting firm with worldwide presence.

“On contacting bank for further information I was told that the credit card in my name was issued five days after submission of my application and the concerned courier service had my acknowledgement proving delivery of the card. I was helpless and decided to take help of a detective agency to probe in to the matter,” says Pandey.

There are many like Vindhyachal who are approaching detective agencies to investigate identity thefts. Experts categorise Identity theft into four - Identity Cloning (using another's information to assume his or her identity in daily life), Business/Commercial Identity Theft (using another's business name to obtain credit), Financial Identity Theft (misusing another's name) and Criminal Identity Theft (posing as another when apprehended for a crime).

Many leading companies being required to pay hefty compensation to the victims whose personal information has been stolen by hackers. Even companies incur great loss due to these identity hackers as they damage websites after cloning it and then by making unauthorised changes.

According to Gartner Survey, the financial losses from phishing attacks stood around USD 2.8 Billion in the year 2006. “The most widespread phishing attacks reported were carried out against e-commerce sectors which include online retailers and auction sites. The second most targeted sector was banks including financial institutes that accounted for 24 per cent of the total number of incidents reported in 2006,” says Anirban.
To learn about Identity Theft, visit, www.cibilconsultants.com
Source: Secondary

Social networking mail Id should not be used for online transactions

Chandigarh: Security software maker Symantec advised internet users not to use e-mail ids being used for social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter for carrying out online banking or business transactions in order to prevent stealing of financial data. 

"They (internet users) should be more cautious while on social networking sites. They should have separate e-mail id for social networking site and other e-mail id for carrying out transactions like banking," Symantec MD Shantanu Ghosh told reporters here while replying to a query steps needed to be protected from cyber attack on social networking sites. "

We have observed that on social networking sites, people usually share their detail including personal ones with their friends as well as with those whom they do not know much and here they face the risk (of being attacked)," he said. "

Cyber attackers then can try to get into your e-mail ids through malware on these sites and try to steal vital information like credit card information," he said. He said not to click on any "untrusted" link in their e-mails or social networking site as it also poses threat of stealing important financial information of the user. 

Ghosh also cited an example when a malware in the name of bollywood female actor Katrina Kaif video was received by internet users on their e-mail ids in India and later it was found that the malware was intended to steal credit card information of the user. Acknowledging that the number of malwares in the cyber world has grown to millions in India in last few years, he also stressed on be cautious on framing a secure password for their e-mail ids to avert any cyber attack. 

"Some users use e-mail password as wife's birth date or anniversary day or birth year and most of these details are available on their social networking site account and it can also be misused by cyber attackers," he said. He added that small and medium business in cities like Chandigarh, Surat, Jaipur are facing the threat of cyber attack because of less spending by small entrepreneurs on security technology and growing use of internet. 

"Small cities, including Chandigarh, are sharing good amount of malware activity...(because) these companies are not spending much on security technology which makes them vulnerable to cyber attack," Ghosh said. He said increasing use of broadband and low awareness among entrepreneurs about malwares are also some of the reasons behind their vulnerability of cyber attack. 

"Augmented by broadband penetration, smaller and emerging cities of India are exploring opportunities offered by the virtual world in turn creating a new lucrative pool of targets for cyber criminals to exploit," he said. As per the Symantec Internet Security, a sizeable 25 per cent of small and emerging cities like Chandigarh, Surat, Cochin, Jaipur are infected by malwares.

Protect yourself from Identity Theft. Visit www.cibilconsultants.com

Source: Secondary