Agape Blog

VASCO Data Security Inc. announced DIGIPASS as a Service (DaaS) authentication model. The company expands its offering to Application Service Providers (ASP) and SaaS vendors. This newest service solution from VASCO offers a complete platform incorporating the user, the enterprise and e-commerce. Today many service providers face high costs to add strong authentication. DIGIPASS as a Service allows customers to secure access to their webmail, network, ERP and CRM systems with one DIGIPASS. The DaaS authentication service enables the user to access their online bank, credit cards, webmail, buy tickets over the Internet, play games and access his/her social network account with one DIGIPASS. DIGIPASS comes as a blessing because this service will exempt the user from remembering endless passwords for various online activities. With one DIGIPASS it will be possible for the user to access countless applications. For application owners and companies too, the benefits of DaaS are many. DIGIPASS as a Service offers on demand identity and transaction security. This application has a high value to the end user. VASCO believes, all online applications have the right to be protected with best-of-breed authentication.

A new tool has been developed by Scientists from Dependable Systems Lab at EPFL l that would help prevent bug manifestations in computer software. The latest version of Dimmunix is developed by a team led by Prof. George Candea at EPFL. It is available for free download. It enables entire networks of computers to cooperate in order to collectively manage bugs in the software. It enables programs to avoid future recurrences of bugs without any assistance from users or programmers. The approach, termed “failure immunity,” starts working the first time a bug occurs - it saves a signature of the bug, then observes how the computer reacts, and records a trace. When the bug is about to manifest again, Dimmunix uses these traces to recognize the bug and automatically alters the execution so the program continues to run smoothly. With Dimmunix, the Web browser learns how to avoid freezing a second time when bugs associated with, for example, plug-ins occur. The latest version uses cloud computing technology to take advantage of networks and thereby inoculating entire communities of computers. Dimmunix is able to safely protect programs from bugs, even in untrusted environments such as the Internet. This is indeed a boon for users as they can be confident that their system and files will be safe without additional effort.

If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM machine, you can notify the police by entering your PIN in reverse. Though it hasn’t been tried in many places, this technology if present will help the banks and its customers.

Let’s say for example, if your pin number is 5678 then you would put in 8765. The ATM recognizes that your pin number is backwards from the ATM card you placed in the machine. The machine will still give you the money you requested, but unknown to the robber, the police will be immediately dispatched to help you.

Now the question arises that 1) what if the pin number happens to be a palindrome? Say 3333, 1221, 6226 and so on. 2) what if the ‘reversed’ pin happens to be somebody else’s pin. 3) Even if the police is dispatched for help, it would take them some time to get to the ATM and by then the harm would have been done. 4) ATM machines are not that intelligent to recognize whether a pin has been reversed entered; it only recognizes the correct pin matching the card.

Each card is paired with a unique pin number, entering the wrong pin would clearly not be matching with the card and therefore no transaction would go through.

Sherwin Azavedo
Manager: Cyber Crime Complaints
Agape Inc.

In wake of cyber terrorism, US President Obama stated last June in its new cyber security plan “The new approach starts at the top, with the commitment from me: From now on, our digital infrastructure — the networks and computers we depend on every day — will be treated as they should be, as a strategic national asset,” in his briefing he said “Protecting this infrastructure will be a national security priority. We will ensure that these networks are secure, trustworthy, and resilient. We will deter, prevent, detect, and defend against attacks and recover quickly from any disruptions or damage”. Obama noted that cybersecurity is a “matter of public safety and national security”.

A month after his declaration, many government and some other websites in the US & South Korea have been crippled by a distributed denial of service attack. What’s interesting is the way the virus seemed to succeed in an unexpected way by sending erstwhile allies. The attack was largely built from the MyDoom virus, first exposed in 2004, so presumably the cadre of infectable machines was low (some 50,000 to 65,000 machines were infected), and seem to be located mainly in China, Korea and Japan. The purpose of most “Distributed Denial of Service” attacks is to create nuisance.

Investigators in the U.S. face a steep task in trying to trace the attack to its source. The assault involved more than 1,00,000 zombie computers (it is a a home-based PC that a remote attacker has accessed and set up to forward transmissions including spam and viruses to other computers on the Internet) linked together in a network known as a “botnet.” Most of those computers were in South Korea, but others were in Japan, China, the U.S. and possibly other countries. The assault began July 4 and targeted dozens of government and private sites in the U.S., including some federal agencies that were shut down for days. Treasury Department and Federal Trade Commission Web sites were knocked out by the blizzard of digital requests.

The officials said that while Internet addresses have been traced to North Korea, that does not necessarily mean the attack involved the Pyongyang government.

It’s a high time that need compulsory & requisite attention on cyber security to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information in today’s highly networked systems environment.

To log online Cyber Crime Complaint call our Toll Free No. at 1800 209 6789 (For India Only) Or visit us at www.agapeinc.in.

Jayesh Bellani
Executive: Fraud Management System

Agape Inc. has joined forces with Verismic to launch an expanded product line for the IT sector that enhances the working condition through reducing carbon emission and helps generate a positive impact internally and also for the external environment in the long run.

The product range is largely focused on the need based solutions for I.T. industry & systems management. Being cost efficient it serves the needs of the company and being eco-friendly it best serves the requests of the surrounding environment.

The products and their features are listed below.

Power Manager: - Power Manager is a fast and easy way to deliver a solution. With this tool you can monitor your power consumption, reduce carbon emissions i.e. reduce costs and prove that Green IT is a cost saver.

Password Reset: - It is a self service password reset tool empowering end users to control and reset personal passwords without calling the help desk. Password Reset delivers instant benefits to every part of the organization and consistently demonstrates the same security, reliability and ease of use across all environments.

Integration Launcher: - It is a tool that bridges the gap between Service Desk and Desktop Systems Management tools to create a single powerful solution. Integration of your tool set makes it possible for Help Desk professionals to remotely diagnose system issues and fix them, versus costly desktop visits.

Archive Analytics: - Archive Analytics detects and identifies those systems that have gone missing from your environment and helps determine if they have been retired or if they have disappeared. It records all changes and provides built-in analysis reports, analyzes Software Distribution Activities and also any change in inventory Analysis.