Cyber Governance issues: INDIA

Cyber Governance issues:

The concept of Internet governance has conflated management of the technical resources necessary for its stability and continued expansion with discussion of behaviors emerging from the use of the Internet.

Evolution of Internet governance

• 1969 – early 1990’s: Building the Internet – decentralized institutions, cooperative arrangements – RFCs for standards, Postel’s IANA for names, numbers

• Early 90’s - 2002: CommercializaLon accelerates – Acceptable use policies – Domain name industry takes off

• 2003 - present: Entry of governments, WSIS, – Governments take Internet seriously – WSIS, WGIG, IGF, National IGFs, Net Mundial

Frame(s)	Issue areas	Institutional venues	CS Groups Involved
“Internet governance”	Policies guiding the allocation and assignment of Internet identifier resources Linkage of identifier issues to human rights issues - The scope and mechanisms for global governance; US pre-eminence - The roles of states, business, civil society, and individuals in global governance	ICANN ; US Govt. ; UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) - [ITU]	IG Caucus (WSIS CS) ; Internet Governance Project (IGP); IP Justice; APC; RITS; Diplo
“A2K” (Access to Knowledge) ; “Copyfight” ; “Free/Libre Software”	Open access to information vs. intellectual property protection ; Software patents and copyrights ; Voluntary commons construction ; DRM resistance ; Nonproprietary standards	The GPL ; WIPO ; National Govts ; UN CSTD	CP Tech; Creative Commons; Public Knowledge; FSF (US, Europe, Latin Am.); EFF
“Human Rights” ; “Digital Rights” ; “Civil liberties” ; « Anti-censorship”	Internet censorship ; Content rating standards ; Blocking and filtering of Internet content ; Privacy and surveillance ; Digital identity	National Govt’s ; IGF ; ICANN	OpenNet Initiative; EDRI; RSF; APC; EPIC; Privacy Internat’l; Amnesty International
“Media Reform” ; “Communication Rights” ; “Community media” ; “Alternative media »	Economic and content regulation of media companies ; Concentration of media ownership ; Bias in media content ; Net neutrality ; Radio spectrum policy	National Govt’s ; UNESCO	Free Press ; CRIS Campaign AMARC ; Indymedia
“ICT4D” ; “Development” ; “Access” ; “Digital Divide”	How information-communication technology (ICTs) can contribute to development ; Broadened access to infrastructure ; Digital divide	GAID UNECA ; IGF	Telecentres ; APC ; IT4Change

 

Cyber User Issues:

1. Failure to cover cyber security basics

2. Not understanding what generates corporate cyber security risks

3. Lack of a cyber-security policy

As part of their cyber security policies, companies should:

·         identify risks related to cyber security

·         establish cyber security governance

·         develop policies, procedures and oversight processes

·         protect company networks and information

·         identify and address risks associated with remote access to client information and funds transfer requests

·         define and handle risks associated with vendors and other third parties

·         be able to detect unauthorized activity.

 

4. Confusing compliance with cyber security

·         40% do not believe that their IT solutions fully equip them to prevent security breaches, and

·         respondents experience an average of three barriers that prevent better/more security measures being implemented.

 

5. The human factor – the weakest link

·         Current or former employees use social engineering (21%), laptops (18%), remote access (17%), email (17%) or copying data to mobile devices (16%) to inflict damage

·         They may do that for financial gain (16%), out of curiosity (12%), to get revenge (10%) or even for the fun of it (6%)

·         And the impact of these attacks is not something to be neglected: companies can experience loss of confidential/proprietary data (11%), reputational harm (11%), critical system disruption (8%), loss of current or future revenue (7%) and even loss of customers (6%).

 

6. Bring your own device policy (BYOD) and the cloud

·         93% of organizations surveyed allow personal devices for work.

·         31% of end users access the network on personal devices (37% in the United States)

·         24 % said misuse of mobile devices/operating system vulnerabilities is the root cause of security breaches.

 

7. Funding, talent and resources constraints

We know that there are plenty of issues to consider when it comes to growing your business, keeping your advantages and planning for growth. So budgets are tight and resources scarce. That’s precisely one of the factors that incur corporate cyber security risks.

Think of this security layer as the immune system of your company that needs funding and talent to ensure that you don’t experience severe losses as a consequence of cyber attacks. A good approach would be to set reasonable expectations towards this objective and allocate the resources you can afford.

 

8. No information security training

9. Lack of a recovery plan

Being prepared for a security attack means to have a thorough plan of what can happen to prevent the cyber attack, but also minimize the damage if is takes place. Through prevention, your company can detect the attack in its early stages, and the threats can be isolated and managed more effectively. By having a recover plan in place, your response time can be shorter and your system can be up and running normally in no time.

 

10. Constantly evolving risks

Polymorphic malware is harmful, destructive or intrusive computer software such as a virus, worm, Trojan or spyware that constantly changes, making it difficult to detect with anti-malware programs. That is why you should take into account that your company might need an extra layer of protection, on top of the antivirus solution.

The first line of defense must be ensured by a product that can act proactively to identify malware, block access to hacker controlled servers and stop data leakage, but also keep your system protected by patching vulnerabilities 

 

Cyber Crime and Offences:

The world 1st computer specific law was enacted in the year 1970 by the German State of Hesse in the form of ‘Data Protection Act, 1970’ with the advancement of cyber technology. With the emergence of technology the misuse of technology has also expanded to its optimum level and then there arises a need of strict statutory laws to regulate the criminal activities in the cyber world and to protect technological advancement system. It is under these circumstances Indian parliament passed its “INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ACT, 2000” on 17th oct to have its exhaustive law to deal with the technology in the field of e-commerce, e-governance, e-banking as well as penalties and punishments in the field of cyber crimes. 

 

• Cyber Crimes Actually Means: It could be hackers vandalizing your site, viewing confidential information, stealing trade secrets or intellectual property with the use of internet. It can also include ‘denial of services’ and viruses attacks preventing regular traffic from reaching your site. Cyber crimes are not limited to outsiders except in case of viruses and with respect to security related cyber crimes that usually done by the employees of particular company who can easily access the password and data storage of the company for their benefits. Cyber crimes also includes criminal activities done with the use of computers which further perpetuates crimes i.e. financial crimes, sale of illegal articles, pornography, online gambling, intellectual property crime, e-mail, spoofing, forgery, cyber defamation, cyber stalking, unauthorized access to Computer system, theft of information contained in the electronic form, e-mail bombing, physically damaging the computer system etc.
• Classifications Of Cyber Crimes: Cyber Crimes which are growing day by day, it is very difficult to find out what is actually a cyber crime and what is the conventional crime so to come out of this confusion, cyber crimes can be classified under different categories which are as follows:

1. Cyber Crimes against Persons:

There are certain offences which affects the personality of individuals can be defined as:

• Harassment via E-Mails: It is very common type of harassment through sending letters, attachments of files & folders i.e. via e-mails. At present harassment is common as usage of social sites i.e. Facebook, Twitter etc. increasing day by day.
• Cyber-Stalking: It means expressed or implied a physical threat that creates fear through the use to computer technology such as internet, e-mail, phones, text messages, webcam, websites or videos.
• Dissemination of Obscene Material: It includes Indecent exposure/ Pornography (basically child pornography), hosting of web site containing these prohibited materials. These obscene matters may cause harm to the mind of the adolescent and tend to deprave or corrupt their mind.
• Defamation: It is an act of imputing any person with intent to lower down the dignity of the person by hacking his mail account and sending some mails with using vulgar language to unknown persons mail account.
• Hacking: It means unauthorized control/access over computer system and act of hacking completely destroys the whole data as well as computer programmes. Hackers usually hacks telecommunication and mobile network.
• Cracking: It is amongst the gravest cyber crimes known till date. It is a dreadful feeling to know that a stranger has broken into your computer systems without your knowledge and consent and has tampered with precious confidential data and information.
• E-Mail Spoofing: A spoofed e-mail may be said to be one, which misrepresents its origin. It shows it’s origin to be different from which actually it originates.
• SMS Spoofing: Spoofing is a blocking through spam which means the unwanted uninvited messages. Here a offender steals identity of another in the form of mobile phone number and sending SMS via internet and receiver gets the SMS from the mobile phone number of the victim. It is very serious cyber crime against any individual.
• Carding: It means false ATM cards i.e. Debit and Credit cards used by criminals for their monetary benefits through withdrawing money from the victim’s bank account mala-fidely. There is always unauthorized use of ATM cards in this type of cyber crimes.
• Cheating & Fraud: It means the person who is doing the act of cyber crime i.e. stealing password and data storage has done it with having guilty mind which leads to fraud and cheating.
• Child Pornography: It involves the use of computer networks to create, distribute, or access materials that sexually exploit underage children.
• Assault by Threat: refers to threatening a person with fear for their lives or lives of their families through the use of a computer network i.e. E-mail, videos or phones.

2. Crimes Against Persons Property:

As there is rapid growth in the international trade where businesses and consumers are increasingly using computers to create, transmit and to store information in the electronic form instead of traditional paper documents. There are certain offences which affects persons property which are as follows:

•  Intellectual Property Crimes: Intellectual property consists of a bundle of rights. Any unlawful act by which the owner is deprived completely or partially of his rights is an offence. The common form of IPR violation may be said to be software piracy, infringement of copyright, trademark, patents, designs and service mark violation, theft of computer source code, etc.
• Cyber Squatting: It means where two persons claim for the same Domain Name either by claiming that they had registered the name first on by right of using it before the other or using something similar to that previously. For example two similar names i.e. www.yahoo.com and www.yaahoo.com.
• Cyber Vandalism: Vandalism means deliberately destroying or damaging property of another. Thus cyber vandalism means destroying or damaging the data when a network service is stopped or disrupted. It may include within its purview any kind of physical harm done to the computer of any person. These acts may take the form of the theft of a computer, some part of a computer or a peripheral attached to the computer.
• Hacking Computer System: Hacktivism attacks those included Famous Twitter, blogging platform by unauthorized access/control over the computer. Due to the hacking activity there will be loss of data as well as computer. Also research especially indicates that those attacks were not mainly intended for financial gain too and to diminish the reputation of particular person or company.
• Transmitting Virus: Viruses are programs that attach themselves to a computer or a file and then circulate themselves to other files and to other computers on a network. They usually affect the data on a computer, either by altering or deleting it. Worm attacks plays major role in affecting the computerize system of the individuals.
• Cyber Trespass: It means to access someone’s computer without the right authorization of the owner and does not disturb, alter, misuse, or damage data or system by using wireless internet connection.
• Internet Time Thefts: Basically, Internet time theft comes under hacking. It is the use by an unauthorised person, of the Internet hours paid for by another person. The person who gets access to someone else’s ISP user ID and password, either by hacking or by gaining access to it by illegal means, uses it to access the Internet without the other person’s knowledge. You can identify time theft if your Internet time has to be recharged often, despite infrequent usage.

3. Cybercrimes Against Government:

There are certain offences done by group of persons intending to threaten the international governments by using internet facilities. It includes:

•  Cyber Terrorism: Cyber terrorism is a major burning issue in the domestic as well as global concern. The common form of these terrorist attacks on the Internet is by distributed denial of service attacks, hate websites and hate e-mails, attacks on sensitive computer networks etc. Cyber terrorism activities endanger the sovereignty and integrity of the nation.
• Cyber Warfare: It refers to politically motivated hacking to conduct sabotage and espionage. It is a form of information warfare sometimes seen as analogous to conventional warfare although this analogy is controversial for both its accuracy and its political motivation.
• Distribution of pirated software: It means distributing pirated software from one computer to another intending to destroy the data and official records of the government.
• Possession of Unauthorized Information: It is very easy to access any information by the terrorists with the aid of internet and to possess that information for political, religious, social, ideological objectives.

4. Cybercrimes Against Society at large:

An unlawful act done with the intention of causing harm to the cyberspace will affect large number of persons. These offences includes:

•  Child Pornography: It involves the use of computer networks to create, distribute, or access materials that sexually exploit underage children. It also includes activities concerning indecent exposure and obscenity.
• Cyber Trafficking: It may be trafficking in drugs, human beings, arms weapons etc. which affects large number of persons. Trafficking in the cyberspace is also a gravest crime.
• Online Gambling: Online fraud and cheating is one of the most lucrative businesses that are growing today in the cyber space. There are many cases that have come to light are those pertaining to credit card crimes, contractual crimes, offering jobs, etc.
• Financial Crimes: This type of offence is common as there is rapid growth in the users of networking sites and phone networking where culprit will try to attack by sending bogus mails or messages through internet. Ex: Using credit cards by obtaining password illegally.
• Forgery: It means to deceive large number of persons by sending threatening mails as online business transactions are becoming the habitual need of today’s life style.

Affects To Whom: Cyber Crimes always affects the companies of any size because almost all the companies gain an online presence and take advantage of the rapid gains in the technology but greater attention to be given to its security risks. In the modern cyber world cyber crimes is the major issue which is affecting individual as well as society at large too.

Need of Cyber Law: information technology has spread throughout the world. The computer is used in each and every sector wherein cyberspace provides equal opportunities to all for economic growth and human development. As the user of cyberspace grows increasingly diverse and the range of online interaction expands, there is expansion in the cyber crimes i.e. breach of online contracts, perpetration of online torts and crimes etc. Due to these consequences there was need to adopt a strict law by the cyber space authority to regulate criminal activities relating to cyber and to provide better administration of justice to the victim of cyber crime. In the modern cyber technology world it is very much necessary to regulate cyber crimes and most importantly cyber law should be made stricter in the case of cyber terrorism and hackers.

Penalty For Damage To Computer System: According to the Section: 43 of ‘Information Technology Act, 2000’ whoever does any act of destroys, deletes, alters and disrupts or causes disruption of any computer with the intention of damaging of the whole data of the computer system without the permission of the owner of the computer, shall be liable to pay fine upto 1crore to the person so affected by way of remedy. According to the Section:43A which is inserted by ‘Information Technology(Amendment) Act, 2008’ where a body corporate is maintaining and protecting the data of the persons as provided by the central government, if there is any negligent act or failure in protecting the data/ information then a body corporate shall be liable to pay compensation to person so affected. And Section 66 deals with ‘hacking with computer system’ and provides for imprisonment up to 3 years or fine, which may extend up to 2 years or both.

 

Case Study-Attacks on Cyberspace: 

• Worm Attack: The Robert Tappan Morris well Known as First Hacker, Son of former National Security Agency Scientist Robert Morris, was the first person to be prosecuted under the ‘Computer and Fraud Act, 1986’. He has created worm while at Cornell as student claiming that he intended to use the worm to check how large the internet was that time. The worm was uncontrollable due to which around 6000 computer machines were destroyed and many computers were shut down until they had completely malfunctioned. He was ultimately sentenced to three years probation, 400 hours of community service and assessed a fine of $10500. So there must be strict laws to punish the criminals who are involved in cyber crime activities.

• Hacker Attack: Fred Cohen, a Ph.D. student at the University of Southern California wrote a short program in the year 1983, as an experiment, that could “infect” computers, make copies of itself, and spread from one machine to another. It was beginning & it was hidden inside a larger, legitimate program, which was loaded into a computer on a floppy disk and many computers were sold which can be accommodate at present too. Other computer scientists had warned that computer viruses were possible, but Cohen’s was the first to be documented. A professor of his suggested the name “virus”. Cohen now runs a computer security firm.
• Internet Hacker: Wang Qun, who was known by the nickname of “playgirl”, was arrested by chinese police in the Hubei province first ever arrest of an internet hacker in China. He was a 19 year old computing student, arrested in connection with the alleged posting of pornographic material on the homepages of several government-run web sites. Wang had openly boasted in internet chat rooms that he had also hacked over 30 other web sites too.

 

Preventive Measures For Cyber Crimes:

Prevention is always better than cure. A netizen should take certain precautions while operating the internet and should follow certain preventive measures for cyber crimes which can be defined as:

• Identification of exposures through education will assist responsible companies and firms to meet these challenges.
• One should avoid disclosing any personal information to strangers via e-mail or while chatting.
• One must avoid sending any photograph to strangers by online as misusing of photograph incidents increasing day by day.
• An update Anti-virus software to guard against virus attacks should be used by all the netizens and should also keep back up volumes so that one may not suffer data loss in case of virus contamination.
• A person should never send his credit card number to any site that is not secured, to guard against frauds.
•  It is always the parents who have to keep a watch on the sites that your children are accessing, to prevent any kind of harassment or depravation in children.
• Web site owners should watch traffic and check any irregularity on the site. It is the responsibility of the web site owners to adopt some policy for preventing cyber crimes as number of internet users are growing day by day.
• Web servers running public sites must be physically separately protected from internal corporate network.
•  It is better to use a security programmes by the body corporate to control information on sites.
• Strict statutory laws need to be passed by the Legislatures keeping in mind the interest of netizens.
• IT department should pass certain guidelines and notifications for the protection of computer system and should also bring out with some more strict laws to breakdown the criminal activities relating to cyberspace.
• As Cyber Crime is the major threat to all the countries worldwide, certain steps should be taken at the international level for preventing the cybercrime.
• A complete justice must be provided to the victims of cyber crimes by way of compensatory remedy and offenders to be punished with highest type of punishment so that it will anticipate the criminals of cyber crime.

 Overview of IT Act 2000

Section	Offence	Description	Penalty
65	Tampering with computer source documents	If a person knowingly or intentionally conceals, destroys or alters or intentionally or knowingly causes another to conceal, destroy or alter any computer source code used for a computer, computer programme, computer system or computer network, when the computer source code is required to be kept or maintained by law for the time being in force.	Imprisonment up to three years, or/and with fine up to ₹200,000
66	Hacking with computer system	If a person with the intent to cause or knowing that he is likely to cause wrongful loss or damage to the public or any person destroys or deletes or alters any information residing in a computer resource or diminishes its value or utility or affects it injuriously by any means, commits hack.	Imprisonment up to three years, or/and with fine up to ₹500,000
66B	Receiving stolen computer or communication device	A person receives or retains a computer resource or communication device which is known to be stolen or the person has reason to believe is stolen.	Imprisonment up to three years, or/and with fine up to ₹100,000
66C	Using password of another person	A person fradulently uses the password, digital signature or other unique identification of another person.	Imprisonment up to three years, or/and with fine up to ₹100,000
66D	Cheating using computer resource	If a person cheats someone using a computer resource or communication.	Imprisonment up to three years, or/and with fine up to ₹100,000
66E	Publishing private images of others	If a person captures, transmits or publishes images of a person's private parts without his/her consent or knowledge.	Imprisonment up to three years, or/and with fine up to ₹200,000
66F	Acts ofcyberterrorism	If a person denies access to an authorised personnel to a computer resource, accesses a protected system or introduces contaminant into a system, with the intention of threatening the unity, integrity, sovereignty or security of India, then he commits cyberterrorism.	Imprisonment up to life.
67	Publishing information which is obscene in electronic form.	If a person publishes or transmits or causes to be published in the electronic form, any material which is lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest or if its effect is such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it.	Imprisonment up to five years, or/and with fine up to ₹1,000,000
67A	Publishing images containing sexual acts	If a person publishes or transmits images containing a sexual explicit act or conduct.	Imprisonment up to seven years, or/and with fine up to ₹1,000,000
67B	Publishing child porn or predating children online	If a person captures, publishes or transmits images of a child in a sexually explicit act or conduct. If a person induces a child into a sexual act. A child is defined as anyone under 18.	Imprisonment up to five years, or/and with fine up to ₹1,000,000 on first conviction. Imprisonment up to seven years, or/and with fine up to ₹1,000,000 on second conviction.
67C	Failure to maintain records	Persons deemed as intermediatary (such as an ISP) must maintain required records for stipulated time. Failure is an offence.	Imprisonment up to three years, or/and with fine.
68	Failure/refusal to comply with orders	The Controller may, by order, direct a Certifying Authority or any employee of such Authority to take such measures or cease carrying on such activities as specified in the order if those are necessary to ensure compliance with the provisions of this Act, rules or any regulations made thereunder. Any person who fails to comply with any such order shall be guilty of an offence.	Imprisonment up to three years, or/and with fine up to ₹200,000
69	Failure/refusal todecrypt data	If the Controller is satisfied that it is necessary or expedient so to do in the interest of the sovereignty or integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign Stales or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence, for reasons to be recorded in writing, by order, direct any agency of the Government to intercept any information transmitted through any computer resource. The subscriber or any person in charge of the computer resource shall, when called upon by any agency which has been directed, must extend all facilities and technical assistance to decrypt the information. The subscriber or any person who fails to assist the agency referred is deemed to have committed a crime.	Imprisonment up to seven years and possible fine.
70	Securing access or attempting to secure access to a protected system	The appropriate Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, declare that any computer, computer system or computer network to be a protected system. The appropriate Government may, by order in writing, authorise the persons who are authorised to access protected systems. If a person who secures access or attempts to secure access to a protected system, then he is committing an offence.	Imprisonment up to ten years, or/and with fine.
71	Misrepresentation	If anyone makes any misrepresentation to, or suppresses any material fact from, the Controller or the Certifying Authority for obtaining any license or Digital Signature Certificate.	Imprisonment up to three years, or/and with fine up to ₹100,000