Kerala - Kochi   

Cyber Inquiry Cell opened

KOCHI: The city police on Thursday took another step towards tackling new-age crime, with the setting up of the Cyber Crime Inquiry Cell.

Inspector-General of Police, Ernakulam Range, Vinson M. Paul inaugurated the office of the Cell on Thursday, in the presence of City Police Commissioner Manoj Abraham, Superintendent of Police (Rural) M. Padmanabhan and other senior officials.

All cyber cases registered at stations and complaints addressed directly to the City Police Commissioner will be taken up by this Cell. These cases were till now investigated by the computer section under the District Crime Records Bureau.

A sudden increase in cyber crimes in recent period had necessitated the formation of a special cyber inquiry cell, said the City Police Commissioner.

Since 2007, the cyber inquiry team of the City Police had cracked 14 cases of abuse of social networking sites, 29 cases of mobile phone abuse, four cases of web site hacking, six cases of e-mail abuse, one case of phishing, and four cases of credit card cheating.

In many instances, cases are not registered as offenders would be those known or related to the victims.

They are often let off with a warning, said Francis Pereira, Sub-Inspector in charge of the Cell.

Additional Sub-Inspector Sambhodaran and five policemen are the other members of the Cyber Cell.

All personnel were given necessary training in cyber investigation at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Mr. Pereira said.

The Cell will use open source Linux-based software BackTrack, which will allow the personnel to penetrate the suspect’s system when the session is on and collect evidence.

The Cell would soon be equipped with more tools for ethical hacking, Mr. Pereira said.

The Cell also has dedicated communication channel, access to which is restricted to those heading the cell and the City Police Commissioner, to collect details of calls made using all mobile phone service providers.

The Cell is employing programming languages like Python to filter the data thus secured and pin-point the offenders.

Cyber complaints can be lodged at Ernakulam IG’s crime stopper number 98460 91096 or City Police crime stopper number 1090 or by email to www.kochicitypolice.org.

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