We have heard the term bullying when we were in schools/universities. We have encountered many cases, where a senior is bullying his junior or a trickster bullying a simpleton. This act is committed when an individual hates another individual / group and wants to vent his anger.
When this bullying happens on the web, it is referred as - Cyber Bullying. The term refers to a situation when someone repeatedly makes fun of another person online or repeatedly picks on another person through emails or text messages, or uses online forums intended to harm, damage, humiliate or isolate another person. It mostly happens when teens use the Internet, cell phones, or other devices to send or post text or images intended to hurt or embarrass another person. Cyber-bullies may disclose victims personal data (e.g. real name, address, or workplace/schools) at websites or forums that defames or ridicules them. Educators have observed an alarming rise in the number of school fights being filmed and posted on YouTube. Thus, many researches have started to recognize cyber bullying as cyber crime.
To talk more about this increasing menace, around 200 Bay Area educators met at Yahoo headquarters in Sunnyvale. Yahoo child safety expert Catherine Titlebalm informed the participants that online unethical behavior can be prevented through education. She also said that kids can be taught of different ways to protect themselves from cyber-bullying. Proper education can definitely reduce the vulnerability of kids being victims of such a menace. But some of the enforcement agencies have already started to take steps to punish the one who tries to bully someone in the cyber space.
This week has been very busy so far as we have been working hard for the release of our new mobile forensics product. This product will help the forensic investigators as it would be available in different versions.
Anyways, this week we are presenting the links which will provide helpful information about the importance of information security and the new updates to the rules. We hope they would be helpful for everyone.
Are You Familiar With the New E-Discovery Rules? Read more
6 burning questions about network security. Read more
With so many ways for people to conduct their lives on the internet, their personal information ends up online. Safeguarding yourself against cyber threats becomes necessary. Read more
With every company trying to outsmart their competitors, this competition is not staying healthy. Some companies are using wrong means to either defame or cause huge losses to their competitor(s). The wrong means indlude bribing competitor’s employee to reveal secrets or manipulating/deleting important information of the competitor by gaining unethical access to their systems. All such activities fall under the umbrella of electronic data tampering. This concept when extended to someone who has been served with a lawsuit, is known as electronic evidence tampering, which has been rising exponentially.
A recent report by KPMG said that technology-related fraud has also emerged as ‘the fastest-growing and most pervasive category of fraud’ in the business world. In 2004, just 19 per cent of the firms polled reported such offences; by last year, the figure was 59 per cent. There is no way to determine exactly how widespread tampering of electronic evidence is, but law firms, enforcement agencies, private sector computer forensics firms such as KPMG and are all seeing the uptrend.
Where previously the person would just delete e-mail correspondence or documents, many now format their hard disks or use specialised electronic erasing programs to cover their electronic trails. They tamper with or destroy electronic evidence by downloaded hacking tools or installing an unsecured wireless network before sending out defamatory e-mail messages or even changing their hard disk or computer.
Although tampering with the evidences can attract punishment that could also bring jail. Despite the hefty penalties, experts believe cases of tampering with or destroying evidence will continue to rise, as the perpetrators are getting better at it.
It’s a sensible initiative that is being taken by many Indian states to empower its law enforcement officers with forensic training. With the evolving technologies, criminals are making full use of them to execute their criminal activities. And in such a scenario, the law enforcement’s old methods fall flat as they are not acquainted with the technology and thus many crimes go unnoticed.
Recently the Karnataka state government announced a scheme to train police constables in forensic science, with a view to curb terrorism and major crimes, particularly in the light of the recent serial bomb blasts in Bangalore. This is part of government’s effort at modernising the State police and ensuring that they are tuned to the changing nature of crimes. After the completion of the training, the police constables will be designated as crime scene investigators.
Around 876 police constables would be trained under the program which is set to be launched on October 13. The second batch of the same program would begin after the first batch is over and would consist of police constables from various police stations, railway police, women police and the traffic police. It is worth noting that Karnataka, which is a leader in forensic science among the police forces of the country, is the first State to evolve such a system. As an extension to the training programme, around 1000 CDs of the training module would be provided to all police stations in the state.
The increase of IT systems in the pharmaceautical companies has not only accelerated their growth, but has also posed new challenges. The biggest challenge for each of such companies is the supply chain fraud threat.
Here is a report that provides more insight on the same.
In the past week i had presented the top 10 security threats for the year 2008. Below i am mentioning a detailed report on those threats and the issues related to them. This report has been made by our Fraud Management expert: Mr. Prabhat Tiwari.
It is need of the hour that every internet user is made aware of the cyber laws and security. Many of us do use the internet for various reasons, but are unaware of what rules should be followed and what to avoid while surfing the internet. I have met numerous people who claim that internet surfing is their hobby or passion, but they are unaware of the possible threats that exist in the cyber space. And such people fall prey to some educated techies and have to face some harsh moments like Ken Haywood or the Kamat family have undergone in the past few months.
Also, with the recent bomb blasts in India, the Indian government has adopted some strict guidelines to prevent cyber terrorism. There are many bodies which are working on the same grounds at the local level. Last year Agape had tied up with the local police authorities to start a campaign against terrorism called as Mission Mrityunjay. And there are some institutes that are following up with the same initiative. Microbyte Computer Academy in Nagpur, is organising a seminar on cyber awareness today. This seminar can be attended by anyone who uses the internet, be it a computer professional or a housewife or parents. This is a great step taken to create awarness on cyber security amongst the Nagpurians.
The links for this week cover a wide range of topics from data recovery to ethical hacking and network security tools. The articles include some How to do it yourself tutorials, as well.
1. The Windows way of successful data recovery. Read more
2. IBM’s research paper on Ethical Hacking. Read more
3. Importance of newtwork security forensic appliances in evidence gathering. Read more
A police officer rushes on to a crime scene, plays with the computer and executes some 150 evidence gathering commands in 15 minutes. A scene from CSI? No, this is a common scene for investigating police officers; thanks to Microsoft.
Microsoft had released a free tool (Beta version) called - Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE), that can be loaded onto a portable device such as a USB drive. COFEE automates some 150 evidence-gathering commands for computers in short time. This tool was available only to law enforcement agencies to test the functionality and strength of the tool. Being a Microsoft product, COFEE is designed to extract information from Windows-based systems only.
The best part with the tool is that an officer with “no or basic training” can extract the data in about 15 minutes and maintain its integrity. It also eliminates the need to seize a computer itself, which typically involves disconnecting from a network, turning off the power and potentially losing data. Instead, the investigator can scan for evidence on site.
Many law enforcement agencies in around 15 countries, including Poland, Philippines, Germany, New Zealand and the United States have been using COFEE to crack a variety of online crimes and recover digital evidence. And seeing the success of the beta version, Microsoft has decided to roll out its release version soon, with more features.
A crime is committed and an investigator is hired for the investigation process. But how to start the investigation process? What are the DO’s and DONT’s that need to be followed? What should the forensic investigator look out for?
Well, all these questions have been answered in the slideshow given below. This slideshow was prepared by our CEO - Dr. Sachin Pandey, who has executed numerous investigation projects successfully.
