KOCHI: Top security organisations in the country, including the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and the CBI are still not equipped enough to take on cyber attacks from across the border, noted cyber expert Ankit Fadia has said.
Ankit Fadia told Express that incidents of 'hacktivism' by forces like the Pakistan Cyber Army are on the rise. With the introduction of 3G network, cyber crimes against mobile phones would increase in an unprecedented manner in the future.
"The bandwidth is higher for 3G and the applications will be higher. There is a risk of these applications being misused and are more vulnerable," he said.
Ankit Fadia, computer security and digital intelligence consultant based at Silicon Valley, California, was in Kochi on Wednesday.
On the recent developments in the cyber world, Ankit said the hacking of the CBI website by Pak Cyber Army revealed the ongoing activities of 'hacktivism' by anti-national elements from across the border.
"There are cyber laws in the country, but the problem is that the police, who are to enforce these laws, are illequipped and are not trained properly. The police officials needed to be trained on various aspects of cyber crimes and security," he said, adding that the next big security threat could be from social networking.
Latest viruses, worms, spyware and malware spread through social networking websites like Twitter, Facebook, Orkut and Myspace. The user will receive a private message from his friend containing a link to a Youtube video. Halfway through the video, it will prompt him to download some Video Plugin. Since the message is from a friend, most people tend to trust it and get infected," he said.
Referring to the recent cyber attacks on defence establishments and security agencies, Ankit said: "Pakistani cyber criminals are able to deface 5060 Indian websites a day. In retaliation, only 1015 Pakistani websites are being defaced. It has been going on since 2001," he said, adding that terrorists have been using mostadvanced technologies for communication. "VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol)chats, hiding messages inside photographs, draft emails and encrypted pen drive are some of the techniques to communicate with each other."
The Stuxnet worm, which infiltrated into a number of sensitive systems recently, is one of the most sophisticated viruses on the net. "These worms attack only a certain type of computers and they keep on spreading it on its own. These are intelligence viruses," he said.
On the recent amendments in the IT Act, Ankit said there was lack of awareness on the part of the users about the Act. Most people do not know that what they do innocently can invite legal action under the Act.
In the case of posting porno pix or video on the net, if the server is hosted within the country it is possible to take action against them. But, more often than not, these servers are posted outside the country.
