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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