To give a push to the ambitious National Intelligence grid (NATGRID), set up after the Mumbai 26/11 attack, the Narendra Modi led NDA government has set up committees involving stakeholders from 22 agencies after they expressed reservation on sharing data and intelligence. The main committee will be headed by the Union Home Secretary where the chief of intelligence agencies and investigating units will be the members, said a home ministry official.

A senior Home Ministry official also told INDIA TODAY that they are also trying to rope in States to share information on NATGRID and expect that a final decision will be taken by January. Apart from the main committee, there will be two sub committees which will be headed by additional secretary and joint secretary level officers and will deliberate on policy, data sharing and coordination. âWe are also holding consultations with enforcement agencies to allay fears regarding breach of security and misuse of information,â the official added.

Among the 22 agencies are Intelligence Bureau (IB), Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Financial intelligence Unit (FIU), Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), Enforcement Directorate (ED), Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) and the Directorate General of Central Excise Intelligence (DGCEI). NATGRID seeks to integrate over 25 categories of database from agencies like, railways, banks, airlines, credit card companies, immigration and others, and make it available to the law enforcement officers

This concept was first mooted by former Home Minister P Chidambaram and was approved by the Cabinet committee on Security during UPA regime. The purpose of creating such a central agency was to have integrated intelligence grid that will link databases of several departments and ministries of the Government of India so as to collect comprehensive patterns of intelligence that can be readily accessed by multiple agencies. It was also aimed to identify, capture and prosecute terrorists and help pre-empt terror plots, said an official.

After it was conceived the project was to be implemented in four phases, the first two of which was planned to be operationalised by 2014 at a cost of Rs.1100 crores while the initial data sourcing was targeted to be made retrievable as early as 2013. However, the delay were caused due to many hurdles including fear among agencies that this may jeopardise their operations. Legal experts also argued that the implementation of the programme will requirement amendments in several laws to allow sharing and transferring of data on items such as property and bank transaction details.

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GROWTH : India cybercrime graph fast-rising at 40 percent annually: Home Ministry report

www.microfinancemonitor.com

December 29, 2014

http://www.microfinancemonitor.com/2014/12/29/india-cybercrime-graph-fast-rising-at-40-percent-annually-home-ministry-report/#

India is fast climbing not only in its Internet accessibility numbers at 300 million users but also in cyber crimes, which have jumped 40% in the last two years, according to a Home Ministry report.

All cyber crime related to hacking, phishing, credit card and banking fraud have increased by more than 40 % annually in the past three years, which requires more attention to curb online crimes, which end up cheating the middle-class and new Internet users in rural areas.

The Home Ministry statistics show that more than 71,780 cyber frauds were reported in 2013, compared to 22,060 recorded in 2012, and the number in 2014 has already reached 62,189 incidents of cyber frauds.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh has recently told parliament that there was a need to impose stiff cyber monitoring rules in the wake of growing use of Internet and social media by global terror outfits like ISIS, which is found misused by techies to spread hatred. He pointed out the arrest of Bangalore professional Mehdi Masroor Biswas for operating a pro-ISIS Twitter account, in support of his view to implement strict monitoring mechanism.

Rajnath said the government has already set up a five-member expert group to recommend strategies to tackle cyber crime.

The cyber crime that was new to India a decade ago has mushroomed with increasing number of case from global destinations like spamming, phishing, malicious malware, website hacking, and online banking fraud. Most of these online crimes originated in the US, Turkey, China, Pakistan, Europe, Brazil, Bangladesh, Algeria and the UAE.

Recently, Bangalore police busted an online shopping website BIGSOP.COM that has cheated thousands of gullible online shoppers.

Soon, the home ministry may come down heavily on online freedom and introduce some curbs to restrain online users and social media geeks.

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BLOCKED : 32 sites including Pastebin, Dailymotion, Github blocked after DoT order

The block was first reported by Pastebin, a website where you can store text online for a set period of time, through its social media accounts on December 19.

By Anupam Saxena

TOI Tech

Dec 31, 2014

NEW DELHI: A number of Indian users are reporting they're not able to access websites such as Pastebin, DailyMotion and Github while accessing the internet through providers such as BSNL and Vodafone.

The block was first reported by Pastebin, a website where you can store text online for a set period of time, through its social media accounts on December 19. In a follow-up post on December 26, the site posted that it was still blocked in India on the directions of the Indian government.

A number of users also posted about the blocks on Reddit threads confirming that the sites have been blocked by Vodafone, BSNL and Hathway, among others.

http://t.co/e3zRKnJJQO seems to have been blocked in India. If you are from India and unable to visit Pastebin, please email us.

Pastebin.com (@pastebin) December 19, 2014

It now appears that the blocks are being carried out on the instructions of DoT (Department of Telecom). The telecom body reportedly issued a notification regarding the same on December 17. A screenshot of the circular has been posted on Twitter by Pranesh Prakash. The notification mentions that 32 URLs including Pastebin, video sharing sites Vimeo and DailyMotion, Internet archive site archive.org and Github.com( a web-based software code repository), have been blocked under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000. DoT has also asked ISPs to submit compliance reports. However, we have not been able to verify the authenticity of the circular.

Insane! Govt orders blocking of 32 websites including @internetarchive @vimeo @github @pastebin #censorship #FoEx pic.twitter.com/F75ngSGohJ

Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh_prakash) December 31, 2014

At the time of writing this story, we could not access Pastebin, DailyMotion and Github on Vodafone 3G and our office network that has access via dedicated lines. Vodafone is not displaying any errors and is simply blocking access. However, a number of users report that they're getting an error that says 'the site is blocked as per the instructions of Competent Authority.' However, we were able to access all the websites on Airtel 3G.

Also see -

India blocks 32 websites, including Vimeo and Github

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/technology/story/india-blocks-32-websites-including-vimeo-and-github/1/410735.html

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BROKEN : Hacker says your fingerprint can be copied from consumer photographs

By Jacob Kastrenakes

December 29, 2014

http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/29/7464409/hacker-copies-fingerprints-from-photographs

If you're really, really worried about securing your digital world, you might need to start wearing gloves. A member of a German hacker collective says that he's been able to copy a person's fingerprint using some photos of them taken with a normal, consumer camera, according to the BBC. The hacker, Jan Krissler of the Chaos Computer Club, says that he was able to copy German defense minister Ursula von der Leyen's fingerprint using a close-up photo of her thumb and several other photos from additional angles, all taken during a public event she was speaking at.

"From the hacking group that fooled Touch ID after two days"

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that fingerprints aren't the most secure form of identification out there. In fact, the Chaos Computer Club which claims to be the largest hacker collective in Europe actually began publishing work toward exploiting Apple's Touch ID sensor just days after the first one went on sale in an iPhone 5S last year. Similarly, the group said then that using "everyday means" they were able to recreate a fingerprint that's capable of fooling a sensor.

There's obviously more reason for concern now if, as Krissler says, a knowledgable hacker just needs a good photo of someone's finger to clone their fingerprint. But typically, that's still not going to be enough to break into someone's accounts. In most cases, this is only going to be relevant on an iPhone, and that means the person forging a fingerprint would also need to have possession of the phone set up to read it. That means a fingerprint is probably going to end up securing a phone from someone who isn't supposed to have it far more often than it'll let some crafty hacker gain access.

Also see

http://www.dw.de/german-defense-minister-von-der-leyens-fingerprint-copied-by-chaos-computer-club/a-18154832

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IT Term of the day

DNS

Stands for "Domain Name System." Domain names serve as memorizable names for websites and other services on the Internet. However, computers access Internet devices by their IP addresses. DNS translates domain names into IP addresses, allowing you to access an Internet location by its domain name.

Thanks to DNS, you can visit a website by typing in the domain name rather than the IP address. For example, to visit the Tech Terms Computer Dictionary, you can simply type "techterms.com" in the address bar of your web browser rather than the IP address (67.43.14.98). It also simplifies email addresses, since DNS translates the domain name (following the "@" symbol) to the appropriate IP address.

To understand how DNS works, you can think of it like the contacts app on your smartphone. When you call a friend, you simply select his or her name from a list. The phone does not actually call the person by name, it calls the person's phone number. DNS works the same way by associating a unique IP address with each domain name.

Unlike your address book, the DNS translation table is not stored in a single location. Instead, the data is stored on millions of servers around the world. When a domain name is registered, it must be assigned at least two nameservers (which can be edited through the domain name registrar at any time). The nameserver addresses point to a server that has a directory of domain names and their associated IP addresses. When a computer accesses a website over the Internet, it locates the corresponding nameserver and gets the correct IP address for the website.

Since DNS translation creates additional overhead when connecting to websites, ISPs cache DNS records and host the data locally. Once the IP address of a domain name is cached, an ISP can automatically direct subsequent requests to the appropriate IP address. This works great until an IP address changes, in which case the request may be sent to the wrong server or the server will not respond at all. Therefore, DNS caches are updated regularly, usually somewhere between a few hours and a few days.

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Quote of the day

Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of the government.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

(1809-1865)

French mutualist political philosopher

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