Agape Blog

Have you heard of this? A number of scams are coming to light now-a-days through the web. One of them is known as the Craigslist scam. Craigslist is a centralized network of online communities with free online classified advertisements like jobs, housing, personals, for sale, services, community, gigs, résumés, and great resource for selling things, finding apartments, locating services and meeting people etc. It is an upcoming and a great service but it never comes with some risk. If you deal with people you aren’t meeting face to face you risk getting scammed.

The buyer and seller on Craigslist are not alert to the danger or deception. Most of these scams follow the same pattern that we see on eBay and other online auction sites. Try posting some easily-mailed valuable item for sale and the first response you get will probably be someone trying to trick you into believing it’s true.

Advice on avoiding scams to people using Craigslist service-

• Deal locally with folks you can meet in
• Never wire funds online, money gram or any other wire service - anyone who asks you to do so is a scammer.
• Fake cashier checks & money orders are common, and banks will cash them and then hold you responsible when the fake is discovered weeks later.
• Never give out financial information (bank account number, social security number, eBay/PayPal info, etc.)
• Avoid deals involving shipping or escrow services and know that ONLY A SCAMMER WILL “GUARANTEE” YOUR TRANSACTION.

Michelle Mitra
Executive: Fraud Management System
Agape Inc

Fraudulent activities (Lottery Scam E-mail) on the Internet are increasing with an alarming rate. However, you must always be aware of the existence of fraudsters on the Internet - cunning operators completely focused on financial gain and their tactics vary.These are frequently circulated with the Purpose to :

1). Persuade the victim to part with personal information to allow the scammers to carry out Identity Theft.
2). Persuade the victim to part with money as an up front payment in order to release a winning Lottery prize which does not exist.

The following points are some tips to look for in order to identify and avoid lottery fraud and scams :
• You did not buy a ticket.
• You are asked to pay money up front for fees or taxes in order to release your “win.”
• You do not live in the country and you are not a citizen of the country of that lottery.
• You are normally asked to contact an “Agent” or “Processing Officer”
• Contact email addresses may be used that are obviously not from a company, such as blahblah- lotto@hotmail.com - How many legitimate companies do you think would use that type of email for their business?
• You are told you must reply within a given time or the money will be given to someone else.
• Spoof websites can be difficult to spot.
• To convince the recipient, emails attached with fake Winning Certificate on behalf of Beneficiary

The following are a few suggestions on how to protect yourself.
• Never provide personal or financial information.
• Don’t be drawn into making an ‘up front’ payment for a lottery prize that probably doesn’t exist.
• Beware of links which could lead you to so-called ‘spoof sites’ set up to extract information from you, like updating personal records which could provide the means to reach or even access your account.
• Whenever you want to discuss your account with e-lottery, we will always verify your identity by asking specific security questions. Our customer care team do not have access to your full password.

So if you ever have any doubts about an email – Be Careful. If you ever have concerns about lottery scams don’t hesitate to CONTACT US ON OUR 365*24*7 TOLL FREE NUMBER at 1800 209 6789 (For India Only) Or visit us at www.agapeinc.in. We are always here to help you.

Jayesh Bellani
Executive: Fraud Management System
Agape Inc

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

What to do if there is a need to conduct a forensic investigation on iPhone device? In view of the fact that the iPhone is quickly becoming the market leader in mobile devices, the need for law enforcement agencies to perform forensic analysis of these devices is beginning to surface. It incorporates desktop-like features in an easy-to-use mobile package as a result of which many are likely to use it as a primary device for various forms of data and communication.

The wide availability, popularity & the expanding capabilities of iPhones make them attractive weapons to perpetuate an attack. This is fueling a discussion about how to deal with these devices when it comes to forensic investigations since existing forensic tools are miserably missing their skill to perform deep level of recovery. The object is to pinpoint that digital evidence can be easily modified, and the tricky step to make sure, your panel is taking suitable steps in the handling of the device. At this time, this area appears to by lacking for solutions.

Agape Inc put forward “Agape I-Phone Restore” which is specially dedicated software tool for iPhones that allows for the extract, decode, analyze and reporting of data. It extracts the data from 2G & 3G iPhone. It offers helpful features as follows:-

• Data integrity reserved by SHA512 to make use of proof in court of law purpose

• Performs bit to bit data acquisition

• Data recovery of entire raw user disk partition

• Extract voicemail, images, email, and other personal data

• Extract map lookups, cache, and other data stored in file system

• Extract complete system files from iPhone

• Extract address book, text messages, media files, and all other possible data from iPhone database

• Supports Text & ASCII data viewing

• Generate report in XML and HTML format

• Support Windows 2000, XP, Vista

For Further Product Information & price information mail us at: info[at]agapeinc.in (replace [at] with @) or visit us at www.agapeinc.in

To log online Cyber Crime Complaint call our Toll Free No. at 1800 209 6789 (For India Only)

Jayesh Bellani
Executive: Fraud Management System

Agape Inc, India’s first ever cyber forensic company launches Tech Pathways for Indian Market. Technology Pathways is a leading edge provider of computer security tools and services for the Corporate IT, government and legal communities.

This launch will underscore the ongoing commitment of Agape Inc to provide expanded services within its products and services as new security standards and methods evolve.

The ProDiscover® family of security products combines high quality, performance, and ease of use at affordable prices Technology Pathways provides products and services for:
• Incident Response - Quickly investigate and positively determine if any compromises have been made to your systems as the result of an incident – without taking your system out of service.
• System Audits – Effectively audit systems throughout the network to insure that they have not been compromised
• Internal Investigations – Investigate and monitor internal computer systems to insure compliance with the law or corporate policies.
• Computer Forensics – Thoroughly examine all data on a computer system, locate any evidence that is stored on that system and safely preserve that evidence for use in a court of law.
• Digital Discovery – Find and produce evidentiary quality electronic documents for civil proceedings.

For Further Product Information & price information mail us at: michelle[at]agapeinc.in (replace [at] with @).

To log online Cyber Crime Complaint call our Toll Free No. at 1800 209 6789 (For India Only)

Jayesh Bellani
Executive: Fraud Management System

Over Last 20 years, the number of mobile phone subscribers in the world has grown from a mere handful to more than 3 billion. It is estimated that more than 1,000 new customers are adding up for mobile services every minute around the world. Consequently, the use of mobile phones connected to criminal activity is on the rise and the invention of Third Generation technology has made effect on security further vulnerable, since this service incorporates MMS, Multimedia Service but more importantly includes videotalk. Now a days, Mobiles are used for e-commerce and the relevance of Mobile Evidence are of   greater importance. The forensic examination of mobile phones is complicated by the fact that each new model requires different analysis tools and investigative techniques. The developers of mobile phone forensic tools struggle to keep pace with changing technologies and capabilities of modern day devices.

Today,  you need multiple products & tools to cover the different  Mobile Phone like GSM Phones, CDMA Phones, TDMA Phones and PDA  to extract vital information like Call log ,the Phone book, SMS messages, Ring tones, Pictures, e-mails and video clips and deleted sms stored in the mobile either on the SIM card or a flash memory card.

On the other hand, AgapeMobiTool provides all in one Solution with added features which enable:
(1)  Acquisition of data from GSM/CDMA 3G SIM cards including text messages, phonebook,  call logs, Network information, IMSI Number.
(2)  Recovers deleted data from GSM/CDMA 3G SIMCARDS.
(3)  Supports with infrared, Bluetooth and serial cables.
(4)  Acquire data like Text messages, Phonebook, Call logs, IMEI Number, Battery Status, Phone Information.
(5)  Acquisition of data from mobile phone memory including pictures, video’s, Audio’s    Themes.
(6)  Retrieve Active & deleted e-mails.
(7)  Perform both Physical and Logical Acquisition.
(8)  Text, Hex & ASCII data viewing options available
(9)  Generate report using XML stylesheet.

AgapeMobiTool is forensically Sound software since it is incorporated with the MD5 & SHA1 & SHA512 Hash Algorithm to ensure data integrity for the Court of Law Purpose.

For Further Product Information & price information mail us at: info[at]agapeinc.in (replace [at] with @) or visit us at www.agapeinc.in.

To log online Cyber Crime Complaint call our Toll Free No. at 1800 209 6789 (For India Only)

Jayesh Bellani
Executive: Fraud Management System

The Government on Thursday set in motion the process of providing a Unique Identification Number(UID) to India’s citizens. The Union Cabinet has appointed the Infosys Chief Nandan Nilekani as the Chairman of National Authority for Unique Identity.

UID will be the equivalent of the social security number in the US. The prime purpose of this number was to track individuals’ accounts. It has since come to be used as an identifier for individuals within the United States.

The closest India has come to this is the Permanent account number (PAN), issued by the Income Tax Office, for purposes of tracking income and income taxes. It has now gained use as a means of identification for activities like getting a phone connection.

Each Unique Identification cards has microprocessor chip with a memory of 16KB which include detail Information regarding Name, Sex, Father’s Name, Address, Marital Status, Photo, Identification Mark and Finger Biometrics that will be based on sophisticated application called SCOSTA, a secured electronic device. Through this card, the citizens will be able to avail basic government services like driving licenses, passports and voter identity cards.

The UID scheme would ensure that lacuna in the system is removed and benefits reach the sections they are meant for. It would be provided to citizens by 2011. Initially, the cards will be given to all voters listed in the electoral roll data.

Jayesh Bellani
Executive: Fraud Management System

In the world of cyber crime, where evil bytes are fast replacing whizzing bullets. Given the unrestricted number of free Web sites, the Internet is undeniably open to exploitation. Known as cyber crimes, these activities involve the use of computers, the Internet, cyberspace and the World Wide Web. There has also been a rise in crimes by the use of computers where hackers and computer professionals attack the government agencies, corporate offices, etc, and mostly the young people and teens are working as hackers and making use of computer as a weapon.

Many computer users will try to hide their tracks if what they are engaged in, is improper. But the technique used by typical computer user will be obvious to a forensic specialist. Whereas, Hackers and Professional Experts have advance knowledge to hide or even erase the inappropriate content from hard drive in sophisticated way which cannot be retrieve back easily.

For this Platform, Agape, India’s leading Cyber forensic Company has developed a software toolkit that allow you to be more effective and efficient in your hard drive forensic Analysis by providing advanced work environment for computer forensic examiners for less money. This set of tools helps you identify whether or not a targeted computer system was used to access inappropriate information. Compared to its competitors, Agape’s Toolkit is more efficient to use, runs fast, is not as resource-hungry, finds Active files as well as deleted files from unallocated spaces called “Slack” & offer many features that the others lack, and it comes at a fraction of the cost!

Toolkit includes different Software tools, each taking different role in the examination. It runs under Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008. The suit is incorporated with the write protection software and Hash Algorithm which ensures data integrity and eliminates any chance of data overwriting. Thus, Empowering the evidence that can be used in Court of Law. Suites include.

Text Analyzer enables quick search over hard drives, zip disks and floppy disk for key words or specific patterns of text. Its features include bookmarking and advanced searching which includes multiple words & multiple phrases searching.

Case Catalyst allows reviewing, searching and reporting of data in XML and HTML format and performs indexing of the files. It includes bookmarking and advanced searching features including multiple words & multiple phrases searching. It supports 200+ file formats for different applications.

Email Inspector is comprehensive forensically sound e-mail examination tools available for searching all supported e-mail files from system. It supports almost all e-mail files formats like Outlook e-mails files (.pst, .msg, .eml), Opera e-mail files (.mbs), Eudora, Netscape Messenger, Pegasus Mail, Calypso, FoxMail, .mbx, .pbx, .tbb etc file formats. It extract e-mails from suspect’s system and converts in readable format. Software also supports report making in XML and HTML format.

Net History Analyzer is a forensic software which acquire all internet history on system like Visited url history , cookies history, system’s internet temporary file and all internet pages that is html File saved in system and system bookmark file. Its functions include bookmarking and also support multiple words & phrases searching. Generates reports in XML and HTML.

RegExtractor is used for analyzing Windows registry entries. It finds incorrect or obsolete information in the registry. RegExtractor works with registry files copied from other computers. It contains information and settings for all the hardware, operating system software, most non-operating system software, users, preferences of the PC, etc. Generates Report in XML and HTML Format, Loads Multiple Registries.

For further information on our products and service visit URL: - www.agapeinc.in or E-MAIL us at info[at]agapeinc.in (replace [at] with @) or SMS AGAPE at 54646

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.