Cyber crime to cyber warfare

Ram Rattan Sharma
The role of information technology in the life of common man has assumed unprecedented significance. It has become indispensable for every kind of interaction and transaction. Internet has become a strong medium and platform to enable users to share ideas, activities and events and express views and opinions on specific topics and events. According to an estimate India is set to become one of the biggest online population by 2015 with an expected 300 million users. Larger than the United States and up from the current 137 million users already in India. But in this process, the system is being coerced to pay heavily interms of hacking, phishing , tracking, security breaches, etc . As per the information tracked and reported to the Indian computer emergency response team at total of 90,119,252 and 117 Govt. websites were hacked in the year 2008, 2009,2010 and 2011 by various hacker groups. In addition during the period December 2011 to Feb 2012 a total number of 112 Govt. websites were hacked. National investigation agency during investigation of certain terror cases has found that terrorist had been using internet and communicating through email to execute the terror actions. Besides that the growing dependence upon communication technology for various business functions has exposed the corporate assets to diverse forms of cyber attacks. Software piracy is also on the rise with increasing instances of illegal copying and distribution of genuine programmes intended to surpass the original programme. According to cyber crime report 2012, it was estimated that more than 42 million people fell victim to the cyber crime in the past 12 months in India suffering approximately 8 billion indirect financial losses. According to the 2012 report 6 6% of Indian online adults have been victims of cyber crime in their life time in the past 12 months 56% percent of online adults in India have experienced it. In India one in three online adults has been a victim of either social or mobile cyber crime in last 12 month and 51% of social network users have been victim of social cyber crimes and it should come as no surprise that mobile platform clouds services will be likely targets for attacks and breaches. The top three mobile platforms cyber criminals will target are windows 8, Android and IOS, threat to Microsoft mobile devices will see the highest rate of growth.
It is also disheartening to note that the cyber crime is turning into cyber war between two countries. The United States is locked in a tight race with China and Russia to build destructive cyber weapons capable of seriously damaging other nation’s critical infrastructure. A holistic approach is followed to secure Indian cyber space. The approach includes R&D legal frame work, security incidents, early warning and response, best security policy, compliance & assurance, international cooperation and security training. It focuses on capacity development strengthening of process frame work and development of technology through R&D programme and implementation of early-watch and warning mechanism for cyber security incident prevention, response and mitigation.
Police and public order are state subjects under the seventh schedule of the Constitution of India and therefore, the state Govts are primarily responsible for prevention, detection, registration, and investigation of crimes including cyber crime and for prosecuting the criminals through the machinery of their law enforcement agencies. Cyber crime cells have been set up by various state Governments. The department of information technology has setup resource centre for cyber forensics at the centre for development of advanced computing, which has developed indigenous cyber forensic tools. These tools are now being used by agencies to investigate cyber crime cases. In an extremely worrying scenario, the greater dependence of life on cyberism and increasing mode of cyber crime has the potential to cripple the entire functioning of the Social system and governance of nation. It is unfortunate that level of awareness at the level of consumer and law-enforcer (both Judges and the advocates ) , about the nature of law itself is going to pose intense threat to the survival of the system. The non-participation of the common people in understating the law makes a law unpopular. This creates confusion. The confusion benefits the perpetrators gradually, the law, instead of giving relief and trouble and inconvenience to the criminals starts creating inconvenience to common people. And the whole purpose of the law is lost. Therefore the laws should be made incongruence with the bent of mind of the people and abilities of the law enforcing agencies. If it does not happen then the law becomes inefficacious and boosts the morale of the criminals.
We are extremely disappointed to note that the big powers instead of evolving joint operations and coordination have started to forge bilateral cyber pacts, which are fuelling and intensifying the regional tensions. In this globalized world, the role of IT and communication cannot be mitigated or neutralized. The very basis of mutual survival in this globalized world is no longer based on defence related industries but on IT enabled industries and services and if the developed are not able to understand the relevance of IT enabled communication, then the whole edifice of globalization would be JEO- Paralyzed.
It is to be noted that cyber crime is an international crime and if the big powers continue to play their regional and parochial game, then frequent global recession cannot be averted. Therefore, both the developed and developing nation’s must try to control cyber crime and discourage the cyber warfare or online warfare or shadow war for the sake of survival of human kind because cyber warfare may produce more powerful repercussions than nuclear wars.
(The author is former Dy. Librarian University of Jammu)
feedbackexcelsior@gmail.com

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