Agape Blog

Cyber Crime is a daunting reality today. It affects every individual connected by a computer or technology. You may not be a hacker but your computer is a potential weapon for criminals to use to attack and damage countries, corporations and even mastermind the destruction of human lives. “Everyone must be aware of the risks that cyber crime and cyber terrorism poses, as ignorance may lead to huge losses and even endanger lives.” Even the participants of the EC-Council Asia Pacific Roundtable Forum unanimously responded to this statement.

Information security is not simply the responsibility of network administrators only, it is the responsibility of every internet user as their ignorance may result in millions of dollars in losses and even the loss of lives. The lack of education among both the users and authorities often results in allowing criminals easy access to even the most high tech security areas. One of the leading cyber crime expert said “No one treats a cyber crime like a murder case, often evidence cannot be used legally as it has been contaminated by the victim or the incident handler, allowing these criminals to escape prosecution.”

Truly, many times people simply ignore to follow certain basic rules like keeping their passwords private or securing their WiFi connections. And they only realise about theor mistakes when it is too late. This is where proper legislation, awareness and education among all levels right from the top management level to even security guards in any corporation is required to ensure the eradication of cyber crimes.

To address & debate internet security issues the World Council for Corporate Governance of UK (WCFCG) together with its associate the International Academy of Law, India (IAL), and in partnership with Cyber Law College are organizing an International Conference on Cyber Security in New Delhi on 29-30 Nov, 2008. The theme for the conference is “Legislation, Monitoring & Enforcement of Cyber Laws”.

Law makers, Governmental policy makers, Legislators, Business leaders, IT experts, eminent jurists, enforcement organizations, academics, bankers & reputation agents are expected to participate. This conference will aim for the formulation & implementation of holistic measures for development, legislation & enforcement of laws for Cyber Security to contain terrorism & promote public interest. Sharing of knowledge & experience of leading Information Technology Experts & Companies, enforcement agencies & jurists in adopting strategies & processes for improving Cyber Security.

Attending this conference would be some eminent personalities like Shri Kapil Sibal, Prof Howard A Schmidt, Dr. Robert Erbacher, Dr. PR Stephenson, Dr. Madhav Mehra and many more. Surely you cannot miss the opportunity of being a part of this conference.

For paticipation details, visit http://www.wcfcg.net

Cyber terrorism and cyber crime are leading to huge losses for many individuals and organizations. There are people sitting in the comfort of their home and are attacking other systems for their malicious intent. Such activities have been discussed at many conferences and events and various solutions are discussed. But implementing these solutions is not easy, as it requires a change in the mindset and old day processes.

Here are some links which discuss modern day solutions for this serious issue.

1. EC-Council, the world’s leading e-business and security certification organization discusses about Modern Defenses against cyber crime during its inaugural Asia-Pacific Roundtable Forum in Kuala Lumpur. Read more

2. How hackers targeted the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain to trick users into downloading malware. Read more

3. Why Pakistan sets death penalty for cyber terrorism? Read more

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has raised concerns over the growing cyber crimes in US that cost tens of millions of dollars and also posing as a serious threat to US security. The FBI cyber division pointed out activities like computer spying and personal information theft as something that needs immediate measures to be curbed.

The U.S. intelligence agencies have earlier pointed fingers on Russia and China as being the two nations that have the abilities to electronic spying by breaking through U.S. computer networks. Apart from these, FBI has narrowed down 24 more countries that pose a threat to the US. Without naming the 24 countries,FBI has made this statement: “There are countries who have an interest in obtaining information from the U.S., in terms of the electronic theft of data.”

The US computer networks are being constantly attacted by Botnets by sending spam e-mails and spreading malicious code. Thus the U.S. federal agents are stepping up efforts to fight computer crime. They are also joining hands with some foreign counterparts to deal this serious issue. It is worth noting that in January this year, U.S. President George Bush had launched an effort called the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, to address the issue of comouter crimes.

With the financial crisis affecting USA severly, it has also affected other countries. This has resulted in a complete turn around in terms of the spendings worldwide. And with such tight situations, online financial fraud has witnessed a soaring growth.

Britan has been the worst affected country after witnessing a soaring cyber crime rate in 2007. A recent report published by an online firm stated that cyber crime in the UK rose by more than 9 percent in 2007. According to Tom Ilube, chief executive, Garlick, majority of the crimes committed online were in relation to fraud and abusive or threatening emails leaving more than two million people prone to online harassment.

The study further revealed that the online crimes were being committed by professionals and one could expect an overall increase owing to the credit crunch that would led many people to perform illegal activities. It’s critical in this time of financial crisis that individuals are vigilant with their personal information, because as long as the credit crunch continues, the growth in online financial fraud is bound to increase.

Is it really possible to catch an email stalker? What if they use an anonymous email account like Gmail or Yahoo? What if they are really computer savvy? Is it still possible? The short answer is Yes. An email stalker can be caught.

The first thing you must realize about an email stalker is that they want you to know who they are. So the typical email stalker will take steps to cover their tracks. They may use free anonymous accounts with fictitious information and even proxy servers or IP spoofing. But one thing they cannot hide is their obsessive compulsive antisocial behavior that causes them to stalk you in the first place. Make no mistake to take this casually as such behavior should be taken seriously. And that same abnormal behavior of the stalker can be predicted and used to trap them into revealing their identity.

If you are a victim of an email stalker then the last thing you should do is ignore it and hope it goes away. If it doesnt, you should consult an expert as nailing the stalker is risky and not any individual can do it. In this type of situation trained investigators experienced in tracking down and identifying cyber stalkers can use the predictable behavior of the obsessive stalker to set traps and trick the stalker into revealing themselves.

With the number of hackers and fraudsters increasing and posing a threat for online users, FBI took the responsibility to punish them. And how they did it was by collecting information about hackers, a method that is often used by the hackers themselves to spoof information from genuine users.

The FBI launched a forum www.darkmarket.ws that captured the details of thousands of hackers and spammers online. Many ID thieves and hackers had been using DarkMarket as a forum to share details of victims and tips, however the whole forum was secretly run by a federal cybercrime agent for two years. J. Keith Mularski was the FBI agent who was managing the forum. He is a senior cybercrime agent based at the National Cyber Forensics Training Alliance in Pittsburgh. The forum has been voluntarily closed earlier this month after running for just under two years, the reason given was that the forum was ‘attracting too much information’.

This forum was uncovered by the German radio station Südwestrundfunk. It indicated that FBI used DarkMarket to build ‘intelligence briefs’ on its members, complete with their internet IP addresses and details of their activities on the site.

Security companies understand the importance of applying brakes to the increasing activities of spammers. Hence it has been managing various activities like the one carried out by FBI. Also in 2004, the Secret Service ran a similar scheme on the crime board ShadowCrew.

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.

Cyber Terrorism - a term coined by the media and not the security agencies, has been extremely prevalent in recent years. A teenager spelling doom over a country by using the internet, are stories which used to be mentioned in movies and novels, few years ago. But with the advancement in technology they are becoming a reality today. These are cases of cyber terrorism.

There are several ways that a terror group can use the internet to inflict economic or morale damage to a nation and perpetrate cyber terrorism. One such way is by attacking economic and government communication networks. Ranging from defacing a website to denial of service (DoS) attacks, such attacks can vary in damage from minor embarrassment to catastrophic social and financial losses.

Today, the internet is full of videos and detailed manuals of how to build, do-it-yourself (DIY) bombs, mechanical weapons, etc. This provides a common man, access to such unhealthy information and then groups are formed to execute a mission.

There are many examples of cyber terrorism like, the recent attacks on Estonian government websites. Individuals like Gary McKinnon who hacked into the Pentagon and other military installations and using computer viruses and worms as platforms of protest. One of the most damaging attacks was the infection of NASA’s computer network with the WANK (Worms Against Nuclear Killers) worm in 1989.

One thing which comes out from this discussion, is that terrorists are using the cyber space to execute their dangerous missions. There are many security conferences, held around the globe that talk about the ways of curbing this menace. Surely, such awareness and knowledge will help in fighting cyber terrorism.

There have been numerous cases in India, wherein crimes were commited and the criminals went unpunished. Why? Because the IT Act 2000 had many loop holes and the cyber criminals exploited the same. The police and the law enforcement could only watch the criminal executing the crime, but could do nothing. But this scenario promises to change soon.

Recently the Indian government decided to amend the Information Technology Act 2000 by incorporating new provisions. Now, the cyber forensics devices and tools used for cracking cyber crimes  would be treated as evidence in the court of law. The main objective behind this amendment is to develop indigenous cyber forensics technology to make the country self-reliant in combating cyber crimes. The government is also stressing on the development of tools for cyber forensics, state-of-the-art training in cyber forensics and technical services like cyber crime analysis and cyber crime investigation.

These steps by the Indian government promises to combat cyber crime in India to a higher degree, than what it is now.