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Cyber Crime Increases 50 Times in India

Following its yearly assessment, the CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team), the apex cyber security division under the ministry of information technology of India, found that cyber crime in the country has accelerated about 50 times since 2004.

CERT's report tries to say that the highest growth has occurred in computer related crimes that attack e-commerce businesses and financial service on the Net.

The agency recorded just 23 cyber crime incidents in 2004 in contrast to a huge 1,237 in 2007. These primarily included phishing attacks, distribution of viruses/malicious code and illegal infiltration to computer networks.

A high ranking official from the IT ministry told DNA on April 8, 2008 that phishing is a kind of fraud in which an online criminal tricks the user and grabs his/her secret online banking details such as account number, or security codes like password to access those accounts.

Further, according to annual report for 2007 of CERT, there were 392 incidents of phishing, 358 cases of virus proliferation and 223 cases of network infiltration recorded in 2007. Compared to this, there were only 3 phishing attacks, 5 cases of virus proliferation and 11 incidents of network infiltration reported in 2004.

While spreading viruses is a familiar security issue, it is the large number of phishing attacks that government specialists are concerned about. For, these usually aim at middle-class consumers who bank or shop online.

CERT, which also tracks Website defacement, found 5,863 Indian Websites that underwent mutilation by global hackers in 2007. The government agency also tracked 1,805 'open proxy' servers that allow anonymous browsing. It also detected more than 25,000 bot-infected computers.

These statistics from CERT are, however, only indicative without giving the actual picture of cyber crime in India. The agency merely maintains records of cases that are notified to it.

Furthermore, a data of the government revealed that in January 2008, 87 security related incidents were recorded in contrast to 45 in December 2007. Of these, 47% involved phishing, 25% related to worm/virus under the malware category, 21% to unauthorized scanning, and 7% to technical help under separate categories.

Related article: Cyber Child abuser Sentenced To Imprisonment

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