Cyber attack – a biggest challenge before the world
Just in 47 days after the first Cyber attack on May 12, once again the servers were down in government and private institutions in various nations because of cyber attack, halting the entire work.
Unfortunate part of it is that even the engineers of US, Britain and Russian like countries who are well advanced in latest technologies, have not so far come up with any solution of cyber attacks, this problem so far. Not only this, they are not able to put their hands on the attackers-hackers and clueless and it is admitted that more dangerous cyber attacks are expected. The cyber experts are of the view that a handful of persons are doing all this to lock the computers for ransom and it could be possible one day by a group of terrorists or opposition group of anti-social elements in the country.
In the recent ‘ransomware’ cyber attack targeted a number of orgaisations across Eurpoe including Britain’s stain-run health service and Spain’s biggest telecommunications firm. The British hospitals were forced to diver emergencies while the Spanish government has stated that the attack had affected the nation’s largest telecommunications company.
Ransomware is a malicious software that locks a device, such as computer, tablet or smartphone and then demands a ransom to unlock it. The first documented case appeared in 2005 in the United States but quickly spread around the world.
There were also reports of infections from Italy, Portugal, Russia and Ukraine and computer systems were infected by cyber criminals with malicious software called ransomware, which locks up computers and demands a ransom to restore access.
Even everyone was so conscious that screenshots of a well-known programme that locks computers and demands a payment in Bitcoin were shared online by parties claiming to be affected, BBC reported. A cyber-security researcher tweeted he had detected 36,000 instances of the ‘ransomware’, called ‘WannaCry’ and variants of that name. It is said to be one of the major cyber attack impacting organizations across Europe at a scale which architect Kevin Beaumont had never seen before.
The Information Technology experts have recognized the attack as ‘Golden Eye’ or PatWrap and multiple researchers are linking the ransomware attack today to a version of a virus called Petya as it is an advanced version which had affected powerfully in Ukraine where the whole banking system was down. Around 80 companies were affected in Ukraine, Russian, Denmark, Britain and US. Besides, the air flights were also grounded. The experts are of the view that it is because of the weaknesses of the previous virus.
According to one of the media house of Ukraine, the hackers have demanded 300 bitcoin ransoms to decrypt their computers.
Pawan Duggal legal expert in cyber laws says that there is no system of reporting the cyber crime in our country when it is mandatory to lodge report under IT law-2013. According to him, IT Act is weak in India and cyber attackers easily put a check mate with their technology and India is becoming a safe place for them.
In fact, bitcoin is virtually a currency and it can also be purchased like any other currency of a country and it is being used mostly in hawala, terrorists attacks and to convert black money. Apart from online payment, it can also be converted into traditional currency and it has purchase-sale exchange also directly from the computer without any middleman. It is kept in Digital Wallet.
The Chinese and Pakistani are considered to be in the mood of cyber attack and its security is very important.
Frankly speaking there is need to make more strictest law for cyber crime declaring it a non bailable punishable offence with minimum 7 to 10 years imprisonment.
According to report Information Centre – INC, there were around 32,000 cyber attacks in the country during the last year and more than 5 crore virus attacks were noticed in the computers of different ministries and departments of Centre. However, Rs.275 crore have been earmarked for cyber security in the next five years in the government set-up.
Cyber security is becoming a big challenge in the country as despite taking number of measures, there is no downfall in cyber attacks so far.
While cyber attackers are coming up with new virus attacks, the technocrats all over the word are also working with its permanant solutions
However, the experts are of the view the best way to be on safer side from the cyber attacks is, to avoid opening of unknown mails or lottery related messages and keep on updating the anti-virus softwares’.
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