Trackable user ID can curb cyber foes: Balakrishnan

As cyber attacks are increasingly being mounted through social media and infected “botnet” computers to harm people and economies, a traceable cyber identity for every single user may be one way of thwarting such attacks, according to N. Balakrishnan, Associate Director of the Indian Institute of Science.

Biometrics could be a traceable solution. Another tool is to educate people about good cyber practices, he told 

The country’s security agencies and policy-makers, he said, were today up against deadly cyber threats from botnets; these armies of breached computers fleece the financial systems and mislead people with misinformation through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and mobile phone texts. Botnets had become the most virulent as their aim was “not to kill the victim but let it bleed to death.”

Dr. Balakrishnan was chairman of the multi-agency joint working group that crafted guidelines on securing the national cyber infrastructure.

Fake or compromised IDs were at the heart of botnets that sent out trouble-causing mails, messages and tweets. “Every crime meets the social media. [Therefore] Every individual should have a traceable identity” to make out machine-generated false information in these media, Dr. Balakrishnan said.

In today’s Internet explosion led by millions of new websites, searches and instant communication, he said “there is a huge impending threat to society from social media.” Indians were also targeted from outside as in the case of people of the northeast fleeing the southern States in August 2012.

People should also be educated about these dangers and how to use their digital devices safely, by practising password protection and logout discipline, he suggested.

Sharat Chandra Babu, Executive Director of the Centre for Development Advanced Computing, which works on cyber security among other areas, said honest designers lagged attackers and should be updated. The countering forces should also make the system smarter, impregnable and confusing to the attacker, he said.

Everything You Need to Know About the Future of Money

The price of a bitcoin topped $900 last week, an enormous surge in value that arrived amidst Congressional hearings where top U.S. financial regulators took a surprisingly rosy view of digital currency. Just 10 months ago, a bitcoin sold for a measly $13.

The spike was big news across the globe, from Washington to Tokyo to China, and it left many asking themselves: “What the hell is a bitcoin?” It’s a good question — not only for those with little understanding of the modern financial system and how it intersects with modern technology, but also for those steeped in the new internet-driven economy that has so quickly remade our world over the last 20 years.

The spike was big news across the globe, from Washington to Tokyo to China, and it left many asking themselves: ‘What the hell is a bitcoin?’

Bitcoin is a digital currency, meaning it’s money controlled and stored entirely by computers spread across the internet, and this money is finding its way to more and more people and businesses around the world. But it’s much more than that, and many people — including the sharpest of internet pioneers as well as seasoned economists — are still struggling to come to terms with its many identities.

With that in mind, we give you this: an idiot’s guide to bitcoin. And there’s no shame in reading. Nowadays, as bitcoin is just beginning to show what it’s capable of, we’re all neophytes.

Bitcoin isn’t just a currency, like dollars or euros or yen. It’s a way of making payments, like PayPal or the Visa credit card network. It lets you hold money, but it also lets you spend it and trade it and move it from place to place, almost as cheaply and easily as you’d send an email.

As the press so often points out, Bitcoin lets you do all this without revealing your identity, a phenomenon that drove its use on The Silk Road, an online marketplace for illegal drugs. But at the same time, it’s a system that operates completely in the public view. All Bitcoin transactions are recorded online for anyone to see, lending a certain transparency to the system, a transparency that can drive a new trust in the economy and subvert the anonymity sought by those on The Silk Road, which the feds shut down last month.

Bitcoin is much more than a money service for illegal operations. It’s a re-imagining of international finance, something that breaks down barriers between countries and frees currency from the control of federal governments. Bitcoin is controlled by open source software that operates according to the laws of mathematics — and by the people who collectively oversee this software. The software runs on thousands of machines across the globe, but it can be changed. It’s just that a majority of those overseeing the software must agree to the change.

India to push for freeing Internet from U.S. control

To insist on Internet data storage within the country

In view of its growing cyber security concerns, India has decided to challenge the U.S. government’s control over the Internet and ensure that the trio of the U.S., Russia and China does not ignore India’s concerns while developing an international regime for Internet governance.

India will also push for storing all Internet data within the country, besides ensuring control and management of servers.

“The control of Internet was in the hands of the U.S. government and the key levers relating to its management was dominated by its security agencies…Mere location of root servers in India would not serve any purpose unless we were also allowed a role in their control and management. We should insist that data of all domain names originating from India…should be stored in India. Similarly, all traffic originating/landing in India should be stored in India,” says an internal note prepared after the meeting of Sub-Committee on International Cooperation on Cyber Security under the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS).

Notably, the key function of domain name system (DNS) management today is in the hands of the U.S. National Telecommunication and Information Administration and the Department of Commerce. Though after persistently putting pressure on companies, India managed to get root servers installed in the country, it wants a say in management of these servers. India is also seeking a key role in policy making on Internet governance at the international level, said a senior government official engaged in India’s cyber security preparedness.

“It was important that management and control of the DNS should be supervised by a ‘Board’ consisting of technical experts nominated by governments and India should be represented on this Board. We should seek a larger determinate role for the GAC [Government Advisory Committee] in ICANN [Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number] a U.S.-based non-profit organisation that coordinates global Internet systems, which we should be effectively represented,” the note adds.

Significantly, under the ‘Affirmation of Commitments’ between the ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce, the ICANN committed that it would not shift outside of the U.S. without the concurrence of the U.S. government and the process of Internet management would be led by private sector. At the meeting, held last month and headed by Deputy National Security Advisor and NSCS Secretary Nehchal Sandhu, it was decided that the Ministry of External Affairs along with the Department of Electronic and Information Technology (DEITy) and the NSCS, will develop a position paper, highlighting India’s concerns regarding representation and management control in the Internet governance domain.

India is also concerned about the proximity of the U.S., Russia and China while deciding on issue of Internet governance. “There was a possibility that the U.S., Russia and China may work out an arrangement that met their concerns and this arrangement was thereafter forced upon other countries. We need to guard against this possibility and ensure that India’s concerns were also accommodated in whatever international regime for Internet governance that ultimately emerged,” the note adds. Notably, today India has third largest Internet users in the world at over 15 crore, only after China (56 crore) and the U.S. (25 crore).

Similarly, India has also decided to favour a pre-dominantly multilateral approach on issues related to Internet governance rather than multi-stakeholder approach which is mainly being advocated by the West. “India feels that the very term multi-stakeholder was something of a ‘misnomer’. A small unrepresentative group of certain individuals, supported by vested interests, appear to have arrogated themselves the right to present certain views in discussions relating to Internet governance. It was not clear as to who they represent and whether who they claimed to represent had in fact nominated them. These persons undermine the positions of the government and were really spokespersons of certain Western interests,” the note says.