Indian Govt plans to tackle Hackers

Hackers attempts @gov.org

Date:   Tuesday, March 11, 2008 

New Delhi: Nowadays, government departments are facing big threats from some hitherto unfamiliar elements. Remote injection, authorization bypass and Cult of the Dead Cow are those that make up a wider nightmare of departments of Railways, TRAI, Customs, among others, reported The Economic Times.

Website hacking has attained critical momentum in India. The last few months have seen hackers attacking the website of TRAI, Indian Railways, Department of Telecom, Air Cargo Customs, National Institute of Social Defence, Forward Markets Commission, National Institute of Health and Family Welfare and BSNL, among others.

The hackers even disfigured the website of department of information technology, the nodal agency that is supposed to solve the very issue of hacking. Hackers have also tampered with the website of the wireless planning and coordination wing of the Department of Telecom, the body which handles the sensitive issue of spectrum allocation.

To stop the menace, the DIT says it is in the process of hosting all the servers of the key ministries in the country itself.

"We have entrusted the National Informatics Centre (NIC) with this task and the servers of most of the ministries have been moved to the government body," a DIT official said. The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN), a DIT body, is in the process of implementing a high-end attack detection solution to make the systems, especially government-owned ones, safer. CERT-IN is also installing a network flow-based threat assessment solution to check the vulnerability of a particular website.

Despite all these efforts, the number of security-related incidents (of hackers crashing Indian websites) has been growing steadily. In January, 87 security incidents were reported as compared to 45 in December 2007. Out of all the incidents, 47 percent were related to phishing, 21 percent unauthorized scanning, 25 percent incidents related to virus under the malicious code category and seven percent incidents were related to technical help under other categories, government data reveal.

In January, only 30 incidents of defacement were reported compared to 509 in December and 305 in November. According to industry sources, the government sector now accounted for 30 percent of all defaced Indian websites in 2007, when compared to about 27 percent in 2006.

 

Source:

 

http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/40258

 

 

      

Security Tips : How to prevent Identity Theft

Most companies handle, process, and store personal information of employees, clients, and business partners every hour of every day. It is more important than ever to safeguard this information due to the growing problem of identity theft.

Identity theft occurs when someone takes another's personal data--such as their social security number (US), social insurance number (Canada), drivers license number, and birth date--and uses it to commit fraud. The thief might apply for telephone service, credit cards or loans, buy merchandise, lease cars or apartments, apply for a mortgage, even get a job--all in someone else's name. The victim could be left with serious damage to their credit record, their bank account, and their good name.

Your vigilance can help prevent identity theft. Follow these security tips at the office to lower your own risk and your company's exposure to this crime.

1. Guard others' personal information as if it were your own.

   • Guard sensitive information such as social security numbers (US), social insurance numbers (Canada), drivers license numbers, addresses, birth dates, mother's maiden name, bank account and credit card numbers, policy numbers, health care data and employee numbers.

2. Take care when exchanging sensitive personal data in conversations.
   • Do not discuss sensitive information in public places, such as in a restaurant, gym, lobby or elevator, or on public transportation.

   • Do not discuss sensitive information on a cell phone, which is vulnerable to casual and electronic eavesdropping.

3. Lock up.
   • Lock up sensitive papers and digital media overnight.
   • Lock your computer with a password-protected screen saver before leaving your desk unattended.

   • Keep your wallet or purse in a locked drawer or cabinet.

4. Don't give passers-by easy access to sensitive papers.
   • Put away sensitive papers before leaving your desk.

   • Don't leave sensitive papers unattended at copiers, fax machines, or printers.

5. Rather than email sensitive personal information, consider other options.

   • Fax it, or send a printed copy in a sealed envelope.

6. Shred papers containing sensitive information before discarding.

   • Preferably, use a cross-cut shredder, which cuts paper into confetti-like pieces, rather than a strip-cut shredder, which cuts paper into long strips that can be reassembled.

7. Have an IT professional overwrite or destroy your digital media (such as a CD, diskette, hard drive or backup tape) before discarding.
   • Note that when you delete a file using the Windows "Delete" function--and when you empty your PC's Recycle Bin--the file is not actually deleted. Instead, that file's media space is simply made available to be overwritten by other data. "Deleted" data that is not overwritten can still be recovered, possibly by an identity thief.

   • Contact your IT support personnel to have them overwrite the data or physically destroy digital media before discarding.

8. Contact internal or external information security specialists to take advantage of their expertise.

   • Information security specialists can help you design ways to store, transmit and process sensitive online and paper-based information in a secure manner.

9. Learn more about how identity thieves steal personal information, ways to help protect yourself, and how to take action if you know or suspect you are a victim. You can begin at websites like these:
   • Equifax's Identity Theft and Fraud page https://www.econsumer.equifax.com/consumer/forward.ehtml?forward=idtheft_ifyouravictim
   • US Federal Trade Commission http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft/
   • Solicitor General of Canada Report on Identity Theft http://www.sgc.gc.ca/publications/policing/Identity_Theft_Consumers_e.asp

   • Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit specializing in identity theft and victim assistance http://www.idtheftcenter.org/index.shtml

   • Source: http://www.aon.com/risk_management/information_security/identity_theft/default.jsp