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CYBERSPACE: HACKING
It's WWWar
With enemy hackers on the prowl, the new battleground
for India is the Internet
By Malini Goyal
"India should be spanked and their nukes
(that is if they have any) be taken away." This message of the Muslim
Online Syndicate greeted surfers when they chanced upon the website of
the Department of Atomic Energy recently.
"We're GForce Pakistan, up with 260 events
of defaces (Indian) and we're proud Pakistani hackers", was the declaration
on the Indian Institute of Science website a few months ago.
 "This
defacement is brought to you by Bajaj Autos in coloboration with Jaswanth
Singh-the a*** who doesn't know when to quit", was the writing on
the screen when the Zee TV site fell to hackers.
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's dream
of smoking the peace pipe with Pakistan's Chief Executive General Pervez
Musharraf may well come true one day. But there is one war between the
two countries that is set to escalate beyond anybody's control-even the
heads of state. It's the war on the web. The battlegrounds are websites
like F***india.org or roguearmyout.com. Hacker groups like Death to India,
Muslim Online Syndicate, Silver Lords, Kill India and G-Force Pakistan
are some of the armies prowling on the Net. They specialise in anti-India
propaganda and circulate instructions on how to break into Indian websites.
At the last count, 635 Indian websites had been hacked into, most of them
allegedly by Pakistani hackers.
The victim list is impressive and embarrassing.
Right from the ultra-sensitive Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai,
the Ministry of External Affairs and the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic
Research to the not-so-sensitive Indian Institute of Science and the Department
of Telecom. The objective appears to be to plant threats and anti-India
slogans on home pages, but there have been instances of hackers guiding
surfers to anti-India websites.
Though most of these attacks have been traced
to Pakistani groups, some Chinese groups, ostensibly upset with India's
stand on National Missile Defence (NMD) system of the US, have joined
in recently. They hacked into the public-sector unit CMC Ltd's site a
few weeks ago and flooded it with anti-US slogan like "f*** USA government"
and "f*** PoizonBOx". For cyberwarriors, India is proving to
be a particularly soft target. Indians may be leading the pack in software
programming, but not many have put their skills into cyberdefence. Srijith
K, who manages the website Indiacracked.com, says, "I haven't seen
many Indian crackers breaking into Pakistani websites." Admits "True
Indian", the cracker who hacked into the unofficial Pakistan Government's
website and the Lashkar-e-Toiba's home page: "At times I feel like
I am one among a billion. I work alone with modest resources."
And that is the problem with Indian hacking
community: they are not organised and prefer to work alone. Hacking is
an offence and irrespective of its objective it could attract a penalty
as high as Rs 1 crore under the Information Technology Act. While Indian
hackers have not kept pace, Indian websites have fallen prey to the woefully
weak security in most Indian sites. "Web hosts are more concerned
about getting their sites online than about security issues," laments
Srijith.
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INDIAN SITES HACKED
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More
than 600 Indian sites have fallen to hackers. These include those
of the Indian Army, BARC, Zee TV, UGC and the Ministry of External
Affairs.
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No wonder only a few know the difference between
a hacker and a cracker. The term hacker means a person who writes programmes
and helps corporations correct flaws in the network or server security.
But now it is commonly used the world over to describe a cracker, a computer
geek who illegally and maliciously break into systems and servers, often
making changes, causing damages for fun or cash. From adolescents indulging
in a frivolous pastime to more organised and planned government initiatives,
hacking is turning into a full-fledged profession. With just a laptop
computer and some technical knowledge, anyone can strike at nations and
corporations in cyberspace. There are companies which hire professional
hackers, referred to as white hackers, to plug security loopholes in their
network. This is a critical and well-paid job that fetches as much as
$100 (Rs 4,600) an hour. While corporates round the world are waking up
to the problem, Indian firms are yet to catch up. Ditto for the government.
Till date, the Ministry of External Affairs website mea.gov.org remains
inaccessible after it was hacked by Pakistani groups last month.
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THE COUNTER ATTACK
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During
the Kargil conflict NRIs set up a website roguearmyout.com. Recently,
Lashkar-e-Toiba's site and pak.gov.org were hacked into.
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Given the spate of attacks on Indian cyberspace,
some patriotic it professionals have mooted the idea of raising a cyber
army. Recently, the Ministry of Information Technology received a message
from a person willing to be a soldier in India's cyber army. The Indian
Military Intelligence Training School and Depot plans to introduce a course
to track hackers, but the Indian Army's webmaster, Major Vivek Bhatnagar,
believes, "Hacking is typically an immature, irresponsible and illegal
act. The Indian armed forces do not resort to cheap gimmicks." Gimmicks
or not, hacking is working well in the propaganda war. And the perpetrator
goes free. Not a single hacker has been caught till date in India. Tracking
the cracker is proving to be a difficult task. "Legal infrastructure,
specialised investigative skills and forensic technology labs-all these
are essential to tackle cyber crime," says Pravin Anand of Anand
& Anand, a Delhi-based law firm specialising in intellectual property
right violations. Indian police is not yet equipped to handle such cases.
The US, China and Israel have trained military
personnel to combat cyberwar. Israel and Palestine have employed tactics
ranging from site defacements, misinformation campaigns and even a virus
war to buttress their war efforts. Cybercrimes and cross-border hacking
have left India with little option but to fortress its cyberdom, byte
the enemy's bullet and get cracking on the hackers.
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