The
days of conventional warfare are over. After attending a training course on
‘NETWORK FORENSICS’ at National Police Academy (NPA) at Hyderabad, I generated
a lot of interest in the subject and started reading about it. Having a good
understanding about computers, the cyber terminology didn’t sound Latin
and Greek for me. I had imagined about cyber espionage through worms and
viruses. But never by any stretch of imagination could I think that cyber
attacks may bring a nation to a halt. Israeli attack on Syria bringing down its
air defence system is a classic example. The skies of Syria looked safe and
largely empty. But through cyber attack, the ground based controllers in Syria
could see no targets in the air and Israel could bomb them without being caught
in the radar. This is genuinely a serious stuff.
In
today’s arsenal of any nation, importance of Cyber Cell/ Cyber Command cannot
be rendered insignificant in comparison to Air, Navy and Army. India has just
started strengthening its cyber infrastructure. However, when we compare
ourselves with US, Russia, China, North Korea and Israel, we have got a lot of
catching up to do. Few days back, some cyber criminal stole around Rs.5 lakhs
from a businessman in Juhu, Mumbai. Most of the transactions between businesses
are through email today. People, at times, don’t even meet ever and still end
up doing business worth crores of rupees. This is all done through Internet.
Internet is a network of networks. A person with malicious intent asked the
businessman in this case through an email to make the payment to a different
bank account this time. This email looked very genuine to the businessman and
he responded normally the way he would respond to the normal business emails.
The payment was made to this bank account. But it was not received by the
target person (the actual client). Hence, FIR was lodged. This reflects how
vulnerable we are in today’s world to cyber threat.
The
programs of the viruses are coded in such a way that they will silently get
downloaded into your system when you visit a particular website or click a
particular pop-up. Some of the codes are written in such a manner that they do
not even get blocked by the firewalls and anti-viruses. So we may better be
more careful. Any system connected to Internet is susceptible to these
vulnerabilities. It’s not that the computers that we use are all manufactured
and assembled inside our own country. The Seagate hard drive is probably made
by an American company in Singapore, Wireless card may be from Malaysia, design
of the Mother board may be from Taiwan, Memory card may belong to Samsung in
Korea, Graphic card and Keyboard from China and what not. Hence, the machines
that we work on are a cusp of materials coming from different places. Thanks to
Globalisation. It brings with it threats that proliferate across boundaries.
As
per the Census and the population pyramid, the proportion of Youth population
in India is greater to the overall strength of the folk. This youth is very
tech savvy. They are excelling not only domestically but are also in high
demand globally, esp. in Silicon Valley. If we train this group in the right
direction and sensitize them about the vulnerabilities of cyber threat, they
can become a lethal force to reckon with. And we need such a specialised force that
understands the importance of the subject and have a willingness to create a
counter for it. We already have many Cyber specialists in the country and a lot
of work and research is already happening in the field. But a country as vast
as India with such diversity cannot afford any kind of a cyber attack on a vast
scale that may bring the power grid of the country to a halt; may stop the
banking operations and may disrupt the overall life of an individual in the
country. We should be ready with our cyber teams and with all the relevant know-how
to counter any such attack.
Dark
Hotel and Whaling attacks, Ransomware, TOR, Dark Web, Intrusion Detection
System (IDS), Sniffing, Spoofing, BotNet, Malware, Web server attacks, DNS
Server attacks, DHCP Server attacks, FTP attacks, Cloud architecture etc are
certain areas which should be made a part of school curriculum. The awareness should
start right from the school days.
Awareness
is like the Sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed.
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