The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Watch out, someone is tracking you on the Net

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 11, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Watch out, someone is tracking you on the Net

By Karthik Subramanian

CHENNAI, AUG. 10. Picture this: There is a spy in your house. Every time, you send information — regarding your age, birthday, credit card number or even your hobbies — across the Internet, there is someone, somewhere else who is tracking you with the help of the spy.

Spyware is what Professor Subramaniam Ganesan of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Oakland University, terms as the "real threat" to Internet users. Mr. Ganesan was in the city for a workshop on computer security and information assurance organised at the Bharat Institute of Higher Education and Research, Selaiyur.

He says the programs might appear as innocuous as pop-up advertisements. Only, they are not.

"Pop-up advertisements are, at most, an irritating factor that slows down Internet browsing. But spyware goes one step further and starts sending information from the target PC to its source elsewhere. This information could be any personal detail that one uses while filling forms," Mr. Ganesan said.

The symptoms of a spyware attack on a PC are hard to miss: the home page and search page of the Internet browser get rewritten automatically to some advertisement-heavy site. There are also these pop-ups, in some cases pornographic, which keep appearing.

Always under attack

In the recent past, there have been several instances of online fraudsters trying to outwit Internet users into submitting their personal details, including credit card numbers.

Customers of e-Bay, the international online mall that acquired www.bazee.com, were targeted recently. They received e-mails urging them to divulge personal information.

In June, a well-known private bank in India received a jolt when a large number of their online customers received fake e-mails urging them to submit their personal details on a message box. It was a well-planned attack, as clicking the message box led to an exact replica of the bank's web site. However, the fraudsters pulled off their ploy within the first day and the bank officials had clarified that there was no financial loss. In the above instances, at least to an extent, the fraudsters had played upon the gullibility of the Internet users. But in the case of spyware, such information can be stolen across the Internet without fuss.

Liable for prosecution

According to N. Vijayashankar, director of the city-based Cyber Law College, the Information Technology Act, 2000, had adequately covered spyware in its definition of "computer contaminant." The companies guilty of spreading the programme are liable for a civil prosecution, with damages up to Rs.1 crore.

Mr. Ganesan and Mr. Vijayashankar agree that there is no such thing as 100 per cent secure Internet system.

Sometimes even the most elaborate online security could be breached. Last month, an engineering student of a premier institution in the city, who went by the nickname `Jack,' hacked into three web sites of the institute and copied passwords from the server. Of course, he said he did it to just prove a point that a loophole existed and alerted the college authorities.

Despite this, the average Internet user will be doing himself a favour by doing his bit to secure his PC . Biggest risk of a spyware is that it can steal the passwords to the bank sites and e-mail boxes and hence Netizens must cover this risk by using appropriate security applications such as Zone Alarm or Ad Aware.

Internet service providers such as Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited have long identified the importance of securing their servers. According to the company's representatives, Jagat Ram and M. Thamil Selvan, their servers are safeguarded by Cisco's Pix firewall and Interscan anti-virus utilities. But there is only a limit to which the safeguards at the ISP level work.

"The corporate clients have already identified the importance of Internet security and are moving to Virtual Private Networks, which enable traffic only between designated points, or are encrypting their data. The home PC users must also recognise the need for adequate safeguards. There are several freeware that will do the job for them," says Mr. Jagat Ram.

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