India - Phishing Attacks Growing, Ranks 14th

The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) conducted a workshop on "Internet and Issues Impacting Policy in the Converged Environment" on August 24, 2007. The workshop was dedicated to discuss the government's role in defining the 'freedom" on the net.

A survey held in the first half of 2007 conducted by Websense Security Labs reveals that US is still on the top position in the list of countries hosting phishing sites with 32.41%. The remaining top 10 countries are: China, Russia, Republic of Korea, Germany, France, Turkey, United Kingdom, Canada and Italy.

But according to the latest survey, US stands at the first position in the phishing Websites, other countries included are India, China, Taiwan and Australia. The experts of IAMAI workshop discloses that India got almost 58% spam mails mostly from Australia, China, US and Taiwan. Considering this, Director CERT-In, Dr. Gulshan Rai, said that in order to enjoy fully the flexibility and power of Internet, a defined set of rules and protocol should exist, as reported by Merinews.com on August 26, 2007.

Rai added that during the years 1998- 2007, phishing incidents have become more common and intricate. Till now in 2007, both in India and foreign countries, there have been almost 180 incidents of phishing attacks.

Interestingly, the experts stress on the point that phishing attacks are usually targeted on financial and banking institutions. They also claimed that these types of attacks generally stem from China, Taiwan, US and Australia.

Jasjit Sawhney, CEO, Net4India, said that every country has defined "freedom" in different ways, so there should be a common definition of what "freedom" on Internet means, as per the reports of Merinews.com on August 26, 2007.

The officials of government have prepared several initiatives for the future undertaken by the information technology department to meet various purposes including making of more NIXI (National Internet Exchange of India) in many states and their interconnection, setting up of a National Internet registry outreach and capacity building of GAC (Government Advisory Committee) Secretariat launch of domain names in Hindi and other Indian languages in 2007 and setting up of Internet Centre of Excellence.

Related article: India Remains an Easy Target for Hackers in '06

» SPAMfighter News - 9/10/2007