The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Recession fuels cyber crime

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Friday, Dec 26, 2008
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Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Recession fuels cyber crime

Staff Reporter

Seminar on combating cyber crime held

Organised hacker networks available for hire
CDAC develops first set of indigenous cyber forensic tools

Thiruvananthapuram: Economic recession is fuelling cyber crime across the globe, according to cyber forensic expert Samir K. Datt.

Speaking at a seminar on combating cyber crime, organised by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) here recently, Mr. Datt said that as the economy falters cyber criminals could swindle financially hard pressed

people by floating fraudulent schemes promising quick money, such as high dividends on deposits, on the Internet.

He said next year there could be a ten-fold increase in malware (software programmes designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner’s consent or knowledge) designed to steal personal information of Internet users. Identity theft related cyber crimes were likely to increase many fold in the coming years and cause huge losses to the economy.

Mr. Datt said the economic recession could force companies to cut down their workforce or downsize the salaries of their employees. Disgruntled employees could steal confidential or proprietary information of their companies and sell it for a profit to competitors. Such ‘insiders’ could plant malicious software or key stroke loggers in the company’s computer networks. They could also expose the vulnerabilities of the company’s computer networks to malicious hackers intent on launching denial of service attacks.

He said there were organised hacker networks available for hire in the cyber underworld.

N. Vijayaditya, Controller of Certifying Authorities, Ministry of Information and Technology, said the use of electronic signatures to authorise financial and other transactions was bound to increase in the coming years.

Such e-signature transactions helped reduce the time required for commerce and negates the need for business functionaries to travel and meet their counterparts in person, thus saving huge costs to their respective companies.

Emergency response

A.S.A. Krishnan, Director, Department of Information Technology, said the Central government had established the Computer Emergency Response Team-India (CERT-In) as the nodal agency to coordinate all cyber security related matters in the country, including protection of its cyber space and information technology infrastructure.

Deepak Maheshwari, director, Corporate Affairs, Microsoft India, said his company had created technology which was proving to be of help for law enforcement agencies worldwide.

He said Microsoft’s Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS) helped the police search and capture information on child abuse and exploitation on the Internet. The CETS was first launched in Canada. Several countries were using the system now. The Microsoft had trained more than 400 officers of different law enforcing agencies worldwide to use the system to track crimes against juveniles.

V.K. Bhadran, additional director, National Research Centre for Cyber Forensics, said the CDAC had successfully developed the country’s first set of indigenous cyber forensic tools for law enforcers combating computer, mobile phone, Internet and other digital devices related crime.

Additional director B. Remani welcomed the gathering. Inspector-General of Police Arun Kumar Sinha also spoke.

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