Agape Blog

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.

Here are this week’s links to some special topics on forensics and related topics.

1. An essential guide to computer data recovery for IT professionals. Read more

2. A unique presentation highlighting the importance of Mobile Forensics. Read more

3. A real life example, wherein an anonymous hacker posted details of millions of residents online - just to highlight the data protection problems in Chile. Read more

There are innumerable crimes that take place around the world, and there are innumerable ways by which the criminals are nailed. But not every crime is completely investigated, not every criminal put behind the bars. Reasons for this can also be many.

To make sure that all the criminals are punished for their wrongdoings, New York police is following a very unique technique. Basically this technique was developed by Doug and Mary Lyall, to find their daughter who went missing 10 years ago.

So the concept is to make the prisoners play the cards in jail. The idea is simple: each of the 52 playing cards contains information about a murder, a missing person or another unsolved crime. Inmates know information law enforcement agents don’t, so they know what’s going on. Thus they can provide information by calling a hot line, wherein they are not required to provide their names. So far, this initiative has given positive results, as 8 criminals have been caught so far.

In India, people can also report crimes by calling a toll free number - 1800-209-6789. This service is provided by Agape Inc, one of India’s premier information security firms.

I was researching on cyber security and i came up with an article wherein the the famous American journalist - Brian Krebs interviewed FBI’s cyber division head - James Finch. I found it helpful as it provides insight into how the FBI sees cyber crime and hence thought of sharing the same.

Here’s the link to the article:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/08/qa_with_fbis_cyber_crime_chief.html?hpid=sec-tech

The University of Alabama at Birmingham is warning computer users of a new spam scam! E-mail is vastly used to stay connected with other people by sharing information and this has been the target of spammers since a long time. Of course, forensic experts  helped in nabbing many cyber space criminals. But as forensic science is advancing, so are the spammers.

They create emails that look normal, but instead of taking you to the body of the email, it takes you to the malware. These are not phishing emails, which ask for your bank account or credit card details, etc. These are of a different type referred as “drive-by infectors”. Usually, the links provided in the email open a pop up which will tell you that your computer is infected. To help you out, it will take you to an anti-virus website, which is deceiving and instead takes you to a malware.

The latest exploitable target for the spammers is - Media. And the latest example is CNN being targeted by spammers. Basically spammers have cloned the news alert the same way that we get breaking news from CNN.

Forensic experts suggest that if you do not trust any email, the easiest way to double check is to log on to the source website mentioned in the email. Also, you should be on the lookout for suspicious emails cluttering your inbox.

In a unique internship program 17 second year students from the Madras University were allowed to undergo a five-day training with the cyber crime cell - Chennai.  This is the first time that the city police have shared the technical and investigation expertise of the cyber cell of the Central Crime Branch (CCB) with students. The students who had undergone internship are currently pursuing their MSc in Forensic Science.

The students were trained in analysis of data, information security, investigation methods and collection of forensic evidence. Various sessions were held on application security, information forensics, how to trace lost mobiles and how internet frauds are tracked by procuring the internet protocol addresses. The training was provided by the cyber cell’s trained professionals.

This unique internship program served two purposes:
1. Police officials were able to educate students on the importance and application of forensics, as the demand for forensic experts is on the rise.

2. The students were able to have a live experience of how forenscics can be used to crack numerous cases.

Chennai Police is planning for more internship programs to students of MA Criminology, in the future.

To cater to the enormous demand for professionals to fight the ever increasing threat of cyber crime, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has started to provide training in Cyber Law. The course is titled - Post Graduate Certificate Course in Cyber Law (PGCCL). This is an online course and designed to develop proper awareness amongst the students about the cyber law. The content of the course highlights topics like: Cyberspace, Technology and Social Issues, Emerging Social Issues From Cyberspace, Regulation of Cyberspace, Cyber Crimes and Torts, Privacy and Data Protection, Dispute Resolution in Cyberspace, Emerging issues in data protection/ privacy, etc.

IGNOU has tied up with the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), which will act as the resource centre for the course. The best feature of this course is that it can be undertaken online, thus eliminating the geographic restrications.

Duration of Course: 6 months - 2 years.

Fees: INR 5000.

For more information on the course contents go to: http://www.ignou.ac.in/schools/sol/PGCCL.doc

The recent bomb blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad were cases of cyber terrorism. An email was sent to a few media houses minutes before the first blast with a challenge to Indian law enforcement agencies to prevent the blasts in the shortest possible time. The Internet protocol, or IP, address of the sender led investigators to a Wi-Fi Internet connection of an American couple living in a flat in Mumbai. Even though the couple claims to be unaware of any such activity, the possibility of their Wi-Fi being hijacked cannot be overlooked. The terrorists have mastered the art of using cyberspace to their advantage, and yet remain anonymous.

Given below are some tips to prevent your Wi-Fi from being hijacked:

1. Change the default SSID name and disable SSID broadcasting
2. Change the default setting of the Wireless Routers
3. Enable MAC address filtering
4. Turn on Encryption
5. Disable the auto-connect feature

To handle the growing threat of cyber crime globally, many countries have decided to be more vigilant on cyber cafes. Cyber cafes allow easy access to internet to everyone and hence it becomes difficult to track the criminals who commit crimes using the internet.

India recently witnessed serial bomb blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad. Police recovered a threatning email that was sent to the media, and it became clear that the terrorists were using the internet to spread terrorism. With this the police in cities like Kolkata and Jamshedpur have decided to  strictly observe the cyber cafes.

The cafe owners have to obtain licence from the state government or local administration for running it. It is not only the cyber cafe owners who are under scanner, even the users and their activities are being followed closely. Any person visiting a cyber cafe may have to produce his identity card or get their names registered with the cyber cafe. The administration has become very strict and plans to implement the specific guidelines for monitoring the systems at cyber cafes. In Jamshedpur, a cyber cell has been set up and police officers are being trained to detect such cyber crime.

In countries like Nigeria which accounts for one of the highest percentage of outgoing cyber crime in the world, the administration has geared up to fight this menace by setting up different cyber cells and asking help from different law enforcement agencies. They have also adopted certain policies to monitor the cyber cafe owners and users.

With the annual rate of cyber crimes increasing at 100 percent, the cyber cell of Delhi Police made a great effort in training 100 officials.
The officials had undergone a six-weeks training programme at the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University. They were given training in hardware and software, computer networks, cyber crime, digital fraud, incident response systems, computer forensics fundamentals, cyber law, e-mail crime, cyber forensics, credit card frauds and e-mail tracing. The training program concluded recently and the first batch of 100 investigating officers of Delhi Police and 2 officers of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) were handed certificates in ‘Cyber Crime Investigation and Computer Forensics’ yesterday.

With terrorists and criminals, increasingly using computers to accomplish terrorists attacks, threats and scams, the need for police officers who can investigate cyber crimes has risen manifold. This was a great effort undertaken by the Delhi Police to train its officials to fight against the increasing  white collar crimes.

Delhi Police Commissioner Y.S. Dadwal said that 100 more officers would undergo similar training soon.