Beware of the online hacker

Last week the government of India approved a new cyber security policy that aims to provide secure computing environment in the country and build capacities to strengthen the current scenario with a focus on manpower training The move came at a time when India has been seeing a torrent of international attacks on its cyber networks A recent report said that India ranks 8th on the list of the top 10 hacking targets accounting for a 23 of the worldrsquos attack traffic during the 4th quarter of 2012u00a0 Although it was a drop from 25 witnessed in the third quarter in the same year some of the most important offices of the Government of India GOI have been compromised including the Prime Ministers Office Ministry of External Affairs and the Defence Research and Development Organisation DRDO To top this New Delhi believes some of these attacks originated from computers in China How big is the threat According to a report published earlier this year by Verizon 52 of all data breaches globally in 2012 were hacking incidents with a large share of it accounting for espionage and sabotage ldquoCyber security is a major concern for governments across the world including India with a majority of threats originating from Chinardquo says Ashish Thapar of Verizon Enterprise Solutions India a web security certificate provider The report published in 2013 recorded more than 47000 cyber security incidents in 2012 the largest ever in a year with 621 confirmed data disclosures and at least 44 million compromised records International cyber attacks Data breaches are alarming as the source is more than often a device in foreign soil with access to secured systems that control the functioning of industries and essential services like electricity grids nuclear power plants manufacturing plants etc hackers could cause a havoc in a country says Thapar While some tech experts claim a situation of cyber warfare wouldn39t arrive a report submitted to the UN Secretary General in 2010 found increasing evidence that states were developing Information and Communication Devices ICTs as instruments of warfare and intelligence for political purposes Right now China is reported to be leading the war with its dedicated army of one lakh cyber warriors While globally cyber attacks are categorised into espionage sabotage and so on depending on the nature of the attack no such classification exists in India However hacking incidents have grown in number from a group of hackers called MilW0rm that attacked computers in Mumbairsquos Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in 1998 According to the GOI between 2008 and October 2011 CERTIn the top Indian agency monitoring cyber attacks in the country reported and traced hacker groups defacing around 653 government websites The government said some of the attacks were traced back to China Personal device a major target While most attacks in India are on government websites and computers globally 70 per cent of the cyber attacks were made on personal devices and this says Vijay Mukhi tech expert is worth noting in an Indian context ldquoThe number of smartphones have grown in the country and today people are uploading almost all kinds of information on the web without even understanding it Besides most of our web profiles are interconnected as we use the same email ID to log into Twitter Facebook Instagram and to your phone If a hacker gets access to one of the passwords he could easily trace all other informationrdquo he says According to Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2012 99 of newly discovered mobile malicious programs target the Android platform the most popular smartphone platform in India identifying an average of 6300 new mobile malware samples every month raising new concerns Ethical hacking ldquoThe need of the hour is to create awareness about cyber security and issues related to itrdquo says ethical hacker Ankit Fadia ldquoEthical hacking can help a great deal in achieving thatrdquo he adds In fact the government and private companies have already started using the services of professionals ethical hackers to conduct security audits where they look for flaws by hacking into a companyrsquos server after receiving authorisation and fix them to make the systems secure Hacktivism Another form of hacking that has risen to popularity over the last few years is Hacktivism an ideology driven online activism where hackers break into websites and servers of governments and private firms to protest against their actions ldquoMost often the aim is to generate media coverage by defacing the websites of public figures websites and or slow down servers using methods like Distributed Denial of Service DDOsrdquo reveals Fadia u00a0A very recent hacktivism incident was when the Indian arm of the infamous hacktivist group Anonymous hacked into Union Minister Kapil Sibalrsquos website as a mark of protest against the Ministerrsquos view on web censorship But unlike criminal hackers who work only for financial gains hacktivism has a lot of public support and their members are connected to each other through ideas Cyber incidents in the news 20122013 MidApril 2012 A series of cyberattacks carried by malware Wiper destroy computer systems at several oil platforms in the Middle East April 2012 More than 700000 Macs estimated to be infected with Flashback Trojan virus The largest mac infectionu00a0to date June 5 2012 64 million password hashes of Linked In hacked Soon Dropbox Lastfm and Gamigo falls into the same trap leaking more than 8 million passwords to the public In 2011 Sony Playstation Platform was hacked compromising users passwords and personal details August 2012 Shamoon attacks Saudi Oil conglomerate Aramco More than 30 000 computers completely destroyedu00a027 September 2012 Adobe certificates stolen Methods ofu00a0cyber attacksgtgt Phishing Malware and spyware Information stealing software programmes Distributed denial of service attacks DDOS Also called the nuclear bomb of cyberwarfare it results in exhaustion of computing or communications resources by engaging many intermediate computers to simultaneously attack one victim Sabotage Affecting the functioning of computers and satellites that coordinate other activities In 2010 the New York Times reported that a malicious software program called Stuxnet had infiltrated factory computers and had spread to plants around the world According to Symantec report in 2010 India accounted for u00a08 of Stuxnet infestations Espionage Obtaining sensitive proprietary or classified information Learning new tricks Indian Honey Net Project Itrsquos a project which aims to learn new tricks and methods used by hackers by attracting them to vulnerable server networks and thus monitoring their actions