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CYBERSPACE: HACKING

The Hacktivist Strikes Back

December 14, 2000. Internet users logged on to discover that a Pakistani website, pak.gov.org had been hacked into. Indians online grinned. It wasn't just the message-an amorous Pakistani professing undying love for his girlfriend-that brought on the smile. It was the hacker's terse warning: "This is the sequel to your trespassing of Indian websites. Don't play around with us. Keep your hands off India." The hacker called himself True Indian. This was the cyber-comeuppance for years of withering attacks by Pakistani hackers.

Vishal Verma (not his real name), 26, leads a schizophrenic existence not unlike Keanu Reeves' computer whiz character in The Matrix. The son of a retired bureaucrat living in Mumbai suburbs is a well-paid remote diagnostics consultant for US-based companies, sniffing around for their vulnerabilities. A task for which he is paid up to $100 (Rs 4,600) an hour. And when his US clients are asleep, he dons his alter ego of the Indian cyber hero. He has few friends in the real world, which he doesn't get to see much of-he spends 10 to14 hours a day online. The insomniac hacktivist professes an almost cavalier contempt at being caught.

It began last December when Verma discovered the Zee TV website had been defaced. Vishal got into the act and after 10 days of furious computing hacked into and captured the pak.gov.org site using Domain Name Server or DNS hijacking. He now uses spoofing techniques to cover his tracks, attacking via servers in other countries. Anti-India propaganda is the red rag that gets our cyberbull cracking. He has recently hoisted the tricolour on the Lashkar-e-Toiba site. "It's not like I hate Pakistan," he says blowing copious smoke rings in the air. "but this propaganda is just too much." But Verma admits that his tally of two defaced websites is woefully inadequate and bemoans the insecure Indian websites and the absence of Indian hactivist groups. "Roughly two Indian websites are defaced by Pakistani hackers each month." He himself too is hamstrung by lack of high computing power-an official Pakistan government website is always beyond his reach. Verma has roped in a veritable United Nations of his hacker friends-Russian, American and Norwegian-to plan a flood attack on an official Pakistani site.

--Sandeep Unnithan

MetroScape

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