case study of cyber crime in india

Landmark Cyber Law cases in India

• Post author By ashwin
• Post date March 1, 2021

By:-Muskan Sharma

Introduction

Cyber Law, as the name suggests, deals with statutory provisions that regulate Cyberspace. With the advent of digitalization and AI (Artificial Intelligence), there is a significant rise in Cyber Crimes being registered. Around 44, 546 cases were registered under the Cyber Crime head in 2019 as compared to 27, 248 cases in 2018. Therefore, a spike of 63.5% was observed in Cyber Crimes [1] .

The legislative framework concerning Cyber Law in India comprises the Information Technology Act, 2000 (hereinafter referred to as the “ IT Act ”) and the Rules made thereunder. The IT Act is the parent legislation that provides for various forms of Cyber Crimes, punishments to be inflicted thereby, compliances for intermediaries, and so on.

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However, the IT Act is not exhaustive of the Cyber Law regime that exists in India. There are some judgments that have evolved the Cyber Law regime in India to a great extent. To fully understand the scope of the Cyber Law regime, it is pertinent to refer to the following landmark Cyber Law cases in India:

• Shreya Singhal v. UOI [2]

In the instant case, the validity of Section 66A of the IT Act was challenged before the Supreme Court.

Facts: Two women were arrested under Section 66A of the IT Act after they posted allegedly offensive and objectionable comments on Facebook concerning the complete shutdown of Mumbai after the demise of a political leader. Section 66A of the IT Act provides punishment if any person using a computer resource or communication, such information which is offensive, false, or causes annoyance, inconvenience, danger, insult, hatred, injury, or ill will.

The women, in response to the arrest, filed a petition challenging the constitutionality of Section 66A of the IT Act on the ground that it is violative of the freedom of speech and expression.

Decision: The Supreme Court based its decision on three concepts namely: discussion, advocacy, and incitement. It observed that mere discussion or even advocacy of a cause, no matter how unpopular, is at the heart of the freedom of speech and expression. It was found that Section 66A was capable of restricting all forms of communication and it contained no distinction between mere advocacy or discussion on a particular cause which is offensive to some and incitement by such words leading to a causal connection to public disorder, security, health, and so on.

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In response to the question of whether Section 66A attempts to protect individuals from defamation, the Court said that Section 66A condemns offensive statements that may be annoying to an individual but not affecting his reputation.

However, the Court also noted that Section 66A of the IT Act is not violative of Article 14 of the Indian Constitution because there existed an intelligible difference between information communicated through the internet and through other forms of speech. Also, the Apex Court did not even address the challenge of procedural unreasonableness because it is unconstitutional on substantive grounds.

• Shamsher Singh Verma v. State of Haryana [3]

In this case, the accused preferred an appeal before the Supreme Court after the High Court rejected the application of the accused to exhibit the Compact Disc filed in defence and to get it proved from the Forensic Science Laboratory.

The Supreme Court held that a Compact Disc is also a document. It further observed that it is not necessary to obtain admission or denial concerning a document under Section 294 (1) of CrPC personally from the accused, the complainant, or the witness.

• Syed Asifuddin and Ors. v. State of Andhra Pradesh and Anr. [4]

Facts: The subscriber purchased a Reliance handset and Reliance mobile services together under the Dhirubhai Ambani Pioneer Scheme. The subscriber was attracted by better tariff plans of other service providers and hence, wanted to shift to other service providers. The petitioners (staff members of TATA Indicom) hacked the Electronic Serial Number (hereinafter referred to as “ESN”). The Mobile Identification Number (MIN) of Reliance handsets were irreversibly integrated with ESN, the reprogramming of ESN made the device would be validated by Petitioner’s service provider and not by Reliance Infocomm.

Questions before the Court: i) Whether a telephone handset is a “Computer” under Section 2(1)(i) of the IT Act?

• ii) Whether manipulation of ESN programmed into a mobile handset amounts to an alteration of source code under Section 65 of the IT Act?

Decision: (i) Section 2(1)(i) of the IT Act provides that a “computer” means any electronic, magnetic, optical, or other high-speed data processing device or system which performs logical, arithmetic, and memory functions by manipulations of electronic, magnetic, or optical impulses, and includes all input, output, processing, storage, computer software or communication facilities which are connected or related to the computer in a computer system or computer network. Hence, a telephone handset is covered under the ambit of “computer” as defined under Section 2(1)(i) of the IT Act.

(ii)  Alteration of ESN makes exclusively used handsets usable by other service providers like TATA Indicomm. Therefore, alteration of ESN is an offence under Section 65 of the IT Act because every service provider has to maintain its own SID code and give its customers a specific number to each instrument used to avail the services provided. Therefore, the offence registered against the petitioners cannot be quashed with regard to Section 65 of the IT Act.

• Shankar v. State Rep [5]

Facts: The petitioner approached the Court under Section 482, CrPC to quash the charge sheet filed against him. The petitioner secured unauthorized access to the protected system of the Legal Advisor of Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) and was charged under Sections 66, 70, and 72 of the IT Act.

Decision: The Court observed that the charge sheet filed against the petitioner cannot be quashed with respect to the law concerning non-granting of sanction of prosecution under Section 72 of the IT Act.

• Christian Louboutin SAS v. Nakul Bajaj & Ors . [6]

Facts: The Complainant, a Luxury shoes manufacturer filed a suit seeking an injunction against an e-commerce portal www.darveys.com for indulging in a Trademark violation with the seller of spurious goods.

The question before the Court was whether the defendant’s use of the plaintiff’s mark, logos, and image are protected under Section 79 of the IT Act.

Decision: The Court observed that the defendant is more than an intermediary on the ground that the website has full control over the products being sold via its platform. It first identifies and then promotes third parties to sell their products. The Court further said that active participation by an e-commerce platform would exempt it from the rights provided to intermediaries under Section 79 of the IT Act.

• Avnish Bajaj v. State (NCT) of Delhi [7]

Facts: Avnish Bajaj, the CEO of Bazee.com was arrested under Section 67 of the IT Act for the broadcasting of cyber pornography. Someone else had sold copies of a CD containing pornographic material through the bazee.com website.

Decision: The Court noted that Mr. Bajaj was nowhere involved in the broadcasting of pornographic material. Also, the pornographic material could not be viewed on the Bazee.com website. But Bazee.com receives a commission from the sales and earns revenue for advertisements carried on via its web pages.

The Court further observed that the evidence collected indicates that the offence of cyber pornography cannot be attributed to Bazee.com but to some other person. The Court granted bail to Mr. Bajaj subject to the furnishing of 2 sureties Rs. 1 lakh each. However, the burden lies on the accused that he was merely the service provider and does not provide content.

• State of Tamil Nadu v. Suhas Katti [8]

The instant case is a landmark case in the Cyber Law regime for its efficient handling made the conviction possible within 7 months from the date of filing the FIR.

Facts: The accused was a family friend of the victim and wanted to marry her but she married another man which resulted in a Divorce. After her divorce, the accused persuaded her again and on her reluctance to marrying him, he took the course of harassment through the Internet. The accused opened a false e-mail account in the name of the victim and posted defamatory, obscene, and annoying information about the victim.

A charge-sheet was filed against the accused person under Section 67 of the IT Act and Section 469 and 509 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860.

Decision: The Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Egmore convicted the accused person under Section 469 and 509 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 and Section 67 of the IT Act. The accused was subjected to the Rigorous Imprisonment of 2 years along with a fine of Rs. 500 under Section 469 of the IPC, Simple Imprisonment of 1 year along with a fine of Rs. 500 under Section 509 of the IPC, and Rigorous Imprisonment of 2 years along with a fine of Rs. 4,000 under Section 67 of the IT Act.

• CBI v. Arif Azim (Sony Sambandh case)

A website called www.sony-sambandh.com enabled NRIs to send Sony products to their Indian friends and relatives after online payment for the same.

In May 2002, someone logged into the website under the name of Barbara Campa and ordered a Sony Colour TV set along with a cordless telephone for one Arif Azim in Noida. She paid through her credit card and the said order was delivered to Arif Azim. However, the credit card agency informed the company that it was an unauthorized payment as the real owner denied any such purchase.

A complaint was therefore lodged with CBI and further, a case under Sections 418, 419, and 420 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 was registered. The investigations concluded that Arif Azim while working at a call center in Noida, got access to the credit card details of Barbara Campa which he misused.

The Court convicted Arif Azim but being a young boy and a first-time convict, the Court’s approach was lenient towards him. The Court released the convicted person on probation for 1 year. This was one among the landmark cases of Cyber Law because it displayed that the Indian Penal Code, 1860 can be an effective legislation to rely on when the IT Act is not exhaustive.

• Pune Citibank Mphasis Call Center Fraud

Facts: In 2005, US $ 3,50,000 were dishonestly transferred from the Citibank accounts of four US customers through the internet to few bogus accounts. The employees gained the confidence of the customer and obtained their PINs under the impression that they would be a helping hand to those customers to deal with difficult situations. They were not decoding encrypted software or breathing through firewalls, instead, they identified loopholes in the MphasiS system.

Decision: The Court observed that the accused in this case are the ex-employees of the MphasiS call center. The employees there are checked whenever they enter or exit. Therefore, it is clear that the employees must have memorized the numbers. The service that was used to transfer the funds was SWIFT i.e. society for worldwide interbank financial telecommunication. The crime was committed using unauthorized access to the electronic accounts of the customers. Therefore this case falls within the domain of ‘cyber crimes”. The IT Act is broad enough to accommodate these aspects of crimes and any offense under the IPC with the use of electronic documents can be put at the same level as the crimes with written documents.

The court held that section 43(a) of the IT Act, 2000 is applicable because of the presence of the nature of unauthorized access that is involved to commit transactions. The accused were also charged under section 66 of the IT Act, 2000 and section 420 i.e. cheating, 465,467 and 471 of The Indian Penal Code, 1860.

• SMC Pneumatics (India) Pvt. Ltd. vs. Jogesh Kwatra [9]

Facts: In this case, Defendant Jogesh Kwatra was an employee of the plaintiff’s company. He started sending derogatory, defamatory, vulgar, abusive, and filthy emails to his employers and to different subsidiaries of the said company all over the world to defame the company and its Managing Director Mr. R K Malhotra. In the investigations, it was found that the email originated from a Cyber Cafe in New Delhi. The Cybercafé attendant identified the defendant during the enquiry. On 11 May 2011, Defendant was terminated of the services by the plaintiff.

Decision: The plaintiffs are not entitled to relief of perpetual injunction as prayed because the court did not qualify as certified evidence under section 65B of the Indian Evidence Act. Due to the absence of direct evidence that it was the defendant who was sending these emails, the court was not in a position to accept even the strongest evidence. The court also restrained the defendant from publishing, transmitting any information in the Cyberspace which is derogatory or abusive of the plaintiffs.

The Cyber Law regime is governed by the IT Act and the Rules made thereunder. Also, one may take recourse to the provisions of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 when the IT Act is unable to provide for any specific type of offence or if it does not contain exhaustive provisions with respect to an offence.

However, the Cyber Law regime is still not competent enough to deal with all sorts of Cyber Crimes that exist at this moment. With the country moving towards the ‘Digital India’ movement, the Cyber Crimes are evolving constantly and new kinds of Cyber Crimes enter the Cyber Law regime each day. The Cyber Law regime in India is weaker than what exists in other nations.

Hence, the Cyber Law regime in India needs extensive reforms to deal with the huge spike of Cyber Crimes each year.

[1] “Crime in India – 2019” Snapshots (States/UTs), NCRB, available at: https://ncrb.gov.in/sites/default/files/CII%202019%20SNAPSHOTS%20STATES.pdf (Last visited on 25 th Feb; 2021)

[2] (2013) 12 SCC 73

[3] 2015 SCC OnLine SC 1242

[4] 2005 CriLJ 4314

[5] Crl. O.P. No. 6628 of 2010

[6] (2018) 253 DLT 728

[7] (2008) 150 DLT 769

[8] CC No. 4680 of 2004

[9] CM APPL. No. 33474 of 2016

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The biggest data breaches in India

Cso online tracks recent major data breaches in india..

Over 313,000 cybersecurity incidents were reported in 2019 alone, according to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the government agency responsible for tracking and responding to cybersecurity threats.

Here, we take a look at some of the biggest recent cybersecurity attacks and data breaches in India.

Air India data breach highlights third-party risk

Date:  May 2021

Impact: personal data of 4.5 million passengers worldwide

Details: A cyberattack on systems at airline data service provider SITA resulted in the leaking of personal data of of passengers of Air India. The leaked data was collected between August 2011 and February 2021, when SITA informed the airline. Passengers didn’t hear about it until March, and had to wait until May to learn full details of what had happened. The cyber-attack on SITA’s passenger service system also affected Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa, Malaysia Airlines and Cathay Pacific.

CAT burglar strikes again: 190,000 applicants’ details leaked to dark web

Date:  May 2021

Impact:  190,000 CAT applicants’ personal details

Details:  The personally identifiable information (PII) and test results of 190,000 candidates for the 2020 Common Admission Test, used to select applicants to the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), were leaked and put up for sale on a cybercrime forum. Names, dates of birth, email IDs, mobile numbers, address information, candidates’ 10th and 12th grade results, details of their bachelor’s degrees, and their CAT percentile scores were all revealed in the leaked database.

The data came from the CAT examination conducted on 29 November 2020 but according to security intelligence firm CloudSEK, the same thread actor also leaked the 2019 CAT examination database.

Hacker delivers 180 million Domino’s India pizza orders to dark web

Date: April 2021

Impact: 1 million credit card records and 180 million pizza preferences

Details: 180 million Domino’s India pizza orders are up for sale on the dark web, according to Alon Gal, CTO of cyber intelligence firm Hudson Rock.

Gal found someone asking for 10 bitcoin (roughly $535,000 or ₹4 crore) for 13TB of data that they said included 1 million credit card records and details of 180 million Dominos India pizza orders, topped with customers’ names, phone numbers, and email addresses. Gal shared a screenshot showing that the hacker also claimed to have details of the Domino’s India’s 250 employees, including their Outlook mail archives dating back to 2015.

Jubilant FoodWorks, the parent company of Domino’s India, told IANS that it had experienced an information security incident, but denied that its customers’ financial information was compromised, as it does not store credit card details. The company website shows that it uses a third-party payment gateway, PayTM.

Trading platform Upstox resets passwords after breach report

Impact: All Upstox customers had their passwords reset

Details: Indian trading platform Upstox has openly acknowledged a breach of know-your-customer (KYC) data. Gathered by financial services companies to confirm the identity of their customers and prevent fraud or money laundering, KYC data can also be used by hackers to commit identity theft.

On April 11, Upstox told customers it would reset their passwords and take other precautions after it received emails warning that contact data and KYC details held in a third-party data warehouse may have been compromised.

Upstox apologised to customers for the inconvenience, and sought to reassure them it had reported the incident to the relevant authorities, enhanced security and boosted its bug bounty program to encourage ethical hackers to stress-test its systems.

Police exam database with information on 500,000 candidates goes up for sale

Date: February 2021

Impact: 500,000 Indian police personnel

Details: Personally identifiable information of 500,000 Indian police personnel was put up for sale on a database sharing forum. Threat intelligence firm CloudSEK traced the data back to a police exam conducted on 22 December, 2019.

The seller shared a sample of the data dump with the information of 10,000 exam candidates with CloudSEK. The information shared by the company shows that the leaked information contained full names, mobile numbers, email IDs, dates of birth, FIR records and criminal history of the exam candidates.

Further analysis revealed that a majority of the leaked data belonged to candidates from Bihar. The threat-intel firm was also able to confirm the authenticity of the breach by matching mobile numbers with candidates’ names.

This is the second instance of army or police workforce data being leaked online this year. In February, hackers isolated the information of army personnel in Jammu and Kashmir and posted that database on a public website.

COVID-19 test results of Indian patients leaked online

Date: January 2021

Impact: At least 1500 Indian citizens (real-time number estimated to be higher)

Details: COVID-19 lab test results of thousands of Indian patients have been leaked online by government websites.

What’s particularly worrisome is that the leaked data hasn’t been put up for sale in dark web forums, but is publicly accessible owing to Google indexing COVID-19 lab test reports.

First reported by BleepingComputer, the leaked PDF reports that showed up on Google were hosted on government agencies’ websites that typically use *.gov.in and *.nic.in domains. The agencies in question were found to be located in New Delhi.

The leaked information included patients’ full names, dates of birth, testing dates and centers in which the tests were held. Furthermore, the URL structures indicated that the reports were hosted on the same CMS system that government entities typically use for posting publicly accessible documents.

Niamh Muldoon, senior director of trust and security at OneLogin said: “What we are seeing here is a failure to educate and enable employees to make informed decisions on how to design, build, test and access software and platforms that process and store sensitive information such as patient records.”

He added that the government ought to take quick measures to reduce the risk of a similar breach from reoccurring and invest in a comprehensive information security program in partnership with trusted security platform providers.

User data from Juspay for sale on dark web

Impact: 35 million user accounts

Details:  Details of close to 35 million customer accounts, including masked card data and card fingerprints, were taken from a server using an unrecycled access key, Juspay revealed in early January. The theft took place last August, it said.

The user data is up for sale on the dark web for around $5000, according to independent cybersecurity researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia. 

BigBasket user data for sale online

Date: October 2020

Impact: 20 million user accounts

Details:  User data from online grocery platform BigBasket is for sale in an online cybercrime market, according to Atlanta-based cyber intelligence firm Cyble.

Part of a database containing the personal information of close to 20 million users was available with a price tag of 3 million rupees ($40,000), Cyble said on November 7.

The data comprised names, email IDs, password hashes, PINs, mobile numbers, addresses, dates of birth, locations, and IP addresses. Cyble said it found the data on October 30, and after comparing it with BigBasket users’ information to validate it, reported the apparent breach to BigBasket on November 1.

Unacademy learns lesson about security

Date: May 2020

Impact: 22 million user accounts

Details:  Edutech startup Unacademy disclosed a data breach that compromised the accounts of 22 million users. Cybersecurity firm Cyble revealed that usernames, emails addresses and passwords were put up for sale on the dark web.

Founded in 2015, Unacademy is backed by investors including Facebook, Sequoia India and Blume Ventures.

Hackers steal healthcare records of 6.8 million Indian citizens

Date: August 2019

Impact: 68 lakh patient and doctor records

Details: Enterprise security firm FireEye revealed that hackers have stolen information about 68 lakh patients and doctors from a health care website based in India. FireEye said the hack was perpetrated by a Chinese hacker group called Fallensky519.

Furthermore, it was revealed that healthcare records were being sold on the dark web – several being available for under USD 2000.

Local search provider JustDial exposes data of 10 crore users

Date: April 2019

Impact: personal data of 10 crore users released

Details:  Local search service JustDial faced a data breach on Wednesday, with data of more than 100 million users made publicly available, including their names, email ids, mobile numbers, gender, date of birth and addresses, an independent security researcher said in a Facebook post.

SBI data breach leaks account details of millions of customers

Date: January 2019

Impact: three million text messages sent to customers divulged

Details:  An anonymous security researcher revealed that the country’s largest bank, State Bank of India, left a server unprotected by failing to secure it with a password.

The vulnerability was revealed to originate from ‘SBI Quick’ – a free service that provided customers with their account balance and recent transactions over SMS. Close to three million text messages were sent out to customers.

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An avid observer and chronicler of emerging technologies with a keen eye on AI and cybersecurity. With wide-ranging experience in writing long-tail features, Soumik has written extensively on the automotive, manufacturing and BFSI sectors. In the past, he has anchored CSO Alert - CSO India's cybersecurity bulletin and been a part of several video features and interviews.

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Inside story of cyber attacks on India’s banks, airlines, railways… and the fightback

On March 2, 2014, Ukraine woke up to a major communication blackout. Mobile phones in the former Soviet republic stopped working, the internet and power grid were down. There was panic all around. As authorities tried to figure out what was happening, Russian forces invaded the country and took over the Crimean Peninsula and the key naval base of Sevastopol. The Russian cyberattack before the actual invasion was quite debilitating, and it offered a glimpse of future military tactics. Armies are now more likely to march in only after crippling the enemy’s communication, banking, power supply and transport systems through cyberattacks.

In fact, this was nearly tried out back in 2003 by the US before it invaded Iraq. It had plans to cripple the Iraqi banking system so that Saddam Hussein would have no money to fight back. But the Pentagon decided against it at the last moment, after the CIA warned that such an attack would also cripple the European banking system which was linked to Iraq’s.

Such attacks are not, however, limited to wars and conflicts. They have become quite common, and India is one of the major victims. More than 11.5 lakh incidents of cyberattacks were tracked and reported to India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) in 2021. According to official estimates, ransomware attacks have increased by 120 per cent in India. Power companies, oil and gas majors, telecom vendors, restaurant chains and even diagnostic labs have been victims of cyberattacks.

On October 12, 2020, Mumbai, the country’s financial capital, was hit by a massive power outage. Train services were cancelled, water supply was affected and hospitals had to rely on generators. Commercial establishments in Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai struggled to keep their operations running until the crisis was resolved two hours later.

Maharashtra Power Minister Nitin Raut alleged sabotage, while cybersecurity experts suspected the hand of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which was engaged in a major standoff with the Indian Army in Ladakh. The needle of suspicion pointed towards 14 Trojan horses, a kind of malware which might have been introduced into the Maharashtra State Electricity Transmission Company servers.

The suspicion was not out of place. Maharashtra Cyber, the nodal agency for cybersecurity in the state, has already been warned of attacks on power conglomerates and dispatch centres. It is an open secret that the PLA’s cyber warfare branch and a million malware families hosted by Chinese cyber espionage groups specialise in such attacks. India’s cybersecurity czar Lieutenant General (retd) Rajesh Pant would not take any chances. He called for reports from the state and Central power ministries. “Was there actuation in the grid? What were the indicators of compromise?” Several suspects—most of them Chinese—showed up.

Cyber forensic teams fanned out to investigate and two reports landed on Pant’s table, of which one said the outage was due to an external attack. Experts, however, concluded that although malware was detected, it did not cause the outage. “There are two types of operating systems connecting the power grid,” said an expert. “The malware was detected in the system that was not capable of putting lights out.”

Finally, the national power grid controlled by the Power System Operation Corporation Limited said the failure happened because of human error. Union Power Minister R.K. Singh, too, clarified that there was no link between the outage and the cyberattack.

“If you take a drop of water and analyse it, you will find a million impurities in it. Similarly, a million malwares are detected every day. What is important is to protect our systems against it,” said Brijesh Singh, additional director general of police, who was instrumental in setting up Maharashtra Cyber. All the same, India’s cyber-warriors are constantly on alert, guarding against malware infecting the country’s various infrastructure operating systems such as the railways, power supplies, banking, communication, information dissemination, hospital networks and airlines.

India, on its part, is worried most about its strategic adversary China, given the bad blood between the two countries. The mandate for coordinating India’s activities across multiple sectors to ensure a secure cyberspace has been given to Pant, who is the national cybersecurity coordinator (NCSC) under the National Security Council Secretariat.

Pant advises Prime Minister Narendra Modi on cybersecurity (he is the first Indian general to serve in this position) and assists National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and his team in drawing up strategies to secure cyberspace. Pant and his team gather information on the intent and capabilities of not just principal players like China, but also their foot soldiers like Pakistan.

Insikt Group—the threat research division of the global cyberintelligence firm Recorded Future, which assists the US Cyber Command and 25 CERTs around the world—said intrusions targeting three Indian aerospace and defence contractors, major telecommunication providers in Afghanistan, India, Kazakhstan and Pakistan and multiple government agencies across the region had been detected. At least six state and regional power dispatch centres and two ports were targets, Indian agencies were warned.

Pant and his team, while collating the information from such friendly agencies and from Indian cyberintelligence units, are trying to arm the country and its myriad entities to defend themselves against cyberattacks. Pant, who spent 41 years in the Army Corps of Signals, is a veteran in cyber warfare. Prior to moving to his new position, he was in Mhow, heading the Army’s cyber training establishment. Under his tutelage, India has made rapid strides in hacking, cryptography, reverse engineering and forensics. In 2020, India jumped 37 positions to reach the tenth position on the United Nations Global Cyber Security Index.

While the Mumbai outage was a wakeup call for the Indian cybersecurity establishment, it also showed that some critical sectors were not affected by the power grid failure or the cyber breach. For India’s cyber preparedness, these turned out to be good examples.

One such entity is the Bombay Stock Exchange, the world’s fastest stock exchange that operates at a median trade speed of six microseconds, processing more than three crore transactions a day. Notified as national critical infrastructure by the Central government, the BSE is now coming up with a power exchange, the third in the country after the Indian Energy Exchange and Power Exchange of India Ltd. Shivkumar Pandey, BSE’s group chief information security officer, said the stock exchange had a fully operational 24x7 next generation cybersecurity operation centre (SOC) that protects it from both internal and external threats.

Pandey said the BSE was a perennial target of sophisticated attacks, which it fights with the SOC operating from multiple sites in hybrid mode, utilising more than 40 niche security technologies. “The SOC is also enabled with AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) technology to proactively detect and respond to highly sophisticated cyberthreats which traditional technologies may fail to detect and alert on time,” he said. The BSE is working in close coordination with CERT-In to exchange intelligence information and contribute to the overall national information security infrastructure.

CERT-In has stepped up efforts to tackle the growing menace of cyberattacks. Dr Sanjay Bahl, director-general of CERT-In, sensitised board members of multiple organisations in the power and banking sectors on cybersecurity and the latest threat perceptions. The first lesson he imparted was to report the incident itself. The biggest drawback in India’s cyber preparedness is that most organisations—both private and public—are reluctant to report incidents of cyberattack for fear of bad publicity and losing customers.

A few months ago, an airport in a metro city faced a cyberattack where nearly a third of its infrastructure was targeted. Luckily, it got fixed quickly, but Central agencies were kept out of the loop initially. “Had it lasted for more than half an hour, it could have created a bigger problem,” said a government official. The incident made both Central and state agencies sit up and agree that they needed to work in tandem, remove overlaps, fix responsibility and integrate various arms for a coordinated response.

In February 2021, when SITA, the Geneva-based air transport data giant which serves more than 90 per cent of the world’s airlines, informed Air India that hackers stole the personal data of 4.5 million passengers, it presented yet another challenge for India’s cybersecurity establishment. The attack happened outside Indian jurisdiction, yet millions of Indians were affected. “The breach involved personal data spanning almost a decade from August 26, 2011 to February 3, 2021,” Air India said in a statement. While the Indian cyber-warriors tried their best to limit the damage caused by the breach, they soon realised that investigation into attacks which happened outside the Indian cyberspace was not easy because of jurisdictional issues.

Apart from airlines, railways and power, another major area of concern is the telecom sector. “It is the easiest target, as also the one that yields the most value to the attacker,” said a cyber expert. “Telecom carriers give attackers several gateways into multiple businesses.”

Telecom service providers are now required to connect only those new devices which are designated as “trusted products from trusted sources”. An intelligence report warned that a single telecom operator intrusion could give attackers access to a lot more information than they would get by going after individuals.

The government is, therefore, wary about rolling out 5G services. “An entirely new ecosystem has to be created and the country needs to be prepared for it,” said an expert. “5G has 200 times more access points for hackers than the existing networks. In fact, some IoT (Internet of Things) devices can be hacked in 15 minutes.”

India’s cyber-warriors are aware of this threat. The national committee on security and telecom, headed by deputy national security adviser Rajinder Khanna, has issued a directive aimed at creating a secure telecom network system. It has made Pant the designated authority to vet telecommunication sources and products that can enter the country’s telecom network.

Assisting Pant in this task is an army of cyber sleuths from different agencies, handpicked to be part of the ‘trusted telecom cell’. They run background checks of telecom vendors who take part in tenders and screen the ultimate beneficiaries. They examine virtually every chip and semiconductor to see their place of origin and what had gone into their making and design. Their findings are transmitted to nodal officers in Central ministries.

Pant, however, has not taken an alarmist position and blacklisted suspicious foreign entities like the US has been doing. While the US comes out with negative lists of Chinese tech companies like Huawei and ZTE which are barred from working with US firms, Pant is quietly drawing up a “positive” list, from which Indian entities can choose their partners. This also has enabled India to sail through the world of global commerce without ruffling diplomatic feathers.

Yet, India has a long way to go to catch up with leading global players in cybersecurity. The malware attack on Cosmos Bank in 2014, in which customers lost 094 crore, was a glaring example of how Indian markets could be easy targets for financial crime syndicates. Brijesh Singh, who handled the case, said he found fraudulent transactions made in 29 countries in two and a half hours. The manner in which the crime was committed showed sophistication and large-scale coordination by international hackers. “What was equally shocking was how online actors used unsuspecting people as money mules to launder money for various criminal operations,” he said.

The Cosmos Bank case has shown that Indian agencies need to step up further in monitoring and preventing money crimes. Sameer Ratolikar, chief information security officer of HDFC Bank, said Indian banks were facing more social engineering attacks like phishing, especially during the pandemic because of the growing number of online transactions.

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“Fraudsters target gullible customers and lure them with various financial offers, making them disclose their personal information like one-time passwords. This requires a layered defence, including customer awareness,” said Ratolikar. “Other important measures include sending OTPs on a different channel, device binding (the process of linking a token to a trusted device), adaptive authentication (a method for selecting the right authentication factors depending on a user’s risk profile and tendencies) and transaction monitoring solutions.”

The financial sector is also grappling with the problem of ransomware. ‘’Third party vendors are important vectors through which ransomware can be infiltrated,” said Ratolikar. “Therefore, having adequate security framework around them is important.” The best way of defence from ransomware is to create employee awareness, develop a proper incident-response plan and undertake regular tabletop exercises. Ratolikar is working closely with CERT-In, which offers real-time intelligence that helps shut down phishing sites located abroad.

While many of these attempts at hacking banks and airlines might appear the handiwork of non-state enemies and mafias, cybersecurity experts are not willing to dismiss them as private crimes.

Even the US, which boasts top-notch cyber defence capabilities, is not immune to attacks. American intelligence agencies believe that Russian saboteurs had hacked into their voting systems multiple times. The Texas-based cybersecurity firm SolarWinds, which has several high-profile clients like the department of homeland security, the treasury department and at least 100 private companies, too, was a victim. The US imposed sanctions on Russia in April, blaming it for the SolarWinds hack and for the interference in the 2020 elections.

Recorded Future has indicated that geopolitical rivalries and border skirmishes are responsible for most of India’s recent woes in cyberspace. It pointed towards China-sponsored groups APT41 and Barium as having targeted Indian companies multiple times. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, an independent agency of the US government, endorsed this view in its annual report released in November, taking note of the PLA’s cyberattacks on Indian targets.

The US has documented the attacks and China has issued a denial, but India has got no proof. The good news is that the FBI is chasing some of these groups and probing their links with China’s ministry of state security.

“We are pursuing these criminals no matter where they are and to whom they may be connected,’’ James A. Dawson, FBI’s acting assistant director, told a federal grand jury during a hearing in one of those rare moments when global cyberthreats had real names and faces to them. The jury indicted five Chinese hackers—Zhang Haoran, Tan Dailin, Jiang Lizhi, Qian Chuan and Fu Qiang—for intrusions affecting 100 companies in the US, Australia, Brazil, India, Japan and Hong Kong.

The Chinese foreign ministry called the charges “speculation and fabrication”. The denials have become shriller, especially after the 2015 US-China Cyber Agreement to curb cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property. “Regrettably, the Chinese Communist Party has chosen a different path of making China safe for cybercriminals so long as they attack computers outside China and steal intellectual property outside China,” said Jeffrey A. Rosen, former acting attorney general of the US.

Emerging trends in cybersecurity indicate that nearly all future global conflicts will have a cyber component. Whether it is for spying on governments, targeting defence forces, hitting power and communication grids, crippling transport networks, subverting financial systems or sabotaging flights, the next war will begin in cyberspace. It may even be waged largely there, yet it will wreak havoc in everyday lives of common people, unless a robust defence is put up.

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Cybercrime and cybersecurity in India: causes, consequences and implications for the future

• Published: 10 September 2016
• Volume 66 , pages 313–338, ( 2016 )

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• Nir Kshetri 1  

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Cybercrime is rising rapidly in India. Developing economies such as India face unique cybercrime risks. This paper examines cybercrime and cybersecurity in India. The literature on which this paper draws is diverse, encompassing the work of economists, criminologists, institutionalists and international relations theorists. We develop a framework that delineates the relationships of formal and informal institutions, various causes of prosperity and poverty and international relations related aspects with cybercrime and cybersecurity and apply it to analyze the cybercrime and cybersecurity situations in India. The findings suggest that developmental, institutional and international relations issues are significant to cybercrime and cybersecurity in developing countries.

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Financial fraud top cyber crime in India; UPI, e-banking most targeted: Study

Financial frauds accounted for 75% of cyber crimes in india from jan 2020 to jun 2023, according to a study by an iit kanpur-incubated start-up..

Financial frauds accounted for over 75 per cent of cyber crimes in the country from January 2020 till June 2023, with nearly 50 per cent cases related to UPI and internet banking, according to a new study by an IIT Kanpur-incubated start-up.

Social media-related crimes such as cheating by impersonation, cyber-bullying, sexting and email phishing accounted for 12 per cent of the online offences during the period, the study showed.

The findings have been mentioned by the Future Crime Research Foundation (FCRF), a non-profit start-up incubated at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Kanpur, in its latest comprehensive whitepaper 'A Deep Dive into Cybercrime Trends Impacting India'.

For online financial frauds, which accounted for the maximum 77.41 per cent offences during the period, the FCRF noted that "this category is a dominant concern, covering fraudulent activities related to online financial transactions".

"Subcategories include debit/credit card fraud, business email compromise, internet banking-related fraud, and the alarmingly prevalent UPI (Unified Payments Interface) fraud (47.25 per cent)", it said.

These figures underscore the need for robust cyber security measures to safeguard financial transactions conducted online, the FCRF said.

Social media-related crimes accounted for 12.02 per cent online offences, according to the whitepaper.

"This category encompasses a wide range of crimes associated with online platforms and social media. Subcategories within this domain include cheating by impersonation, cyber-bullying, sexting, email phishing, and more. While cyber-bullying and impersonation accounted for significant percentages, email phishing and provocative speech for unlawful acts had a comparatively lower impact," it noted.

The FCRF stated that "other notable categories" contributed to nine per cent of the online crimes which delve into several other cybercrime categories with smaller but notable percentages, including online cyber-trafficking, online gambling, ransomware, cryptocurrency crime, and cyber terrorism.

Highlighting the diverse methods cybercriminals use to target digital infrastructure, the whitepaper also flagged that 1.57 per cent online crimes pertained to hacking or damage to computer systems such as unauthorised access, data breach, email hacking and website defacement or hacking.

"It is crucial for law enforcement agencies, individuals, businesses, and policymakers to understand the changing landscape of cybercrimes in India. This report not only highlights the distribution of cybercrimes but also underscores the need for collaborative efforts to combat these threats," FCRF co-founder Harshvardhan Singh said.

Singh added that "as technology continues to advance, so do the tactics of cybercriminals, making it essential for all stakeholders to stay informed and vigilant".

• Cyber Crime

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Mapping the global geography of cybercrime with the World Cybercrime Index

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original draft

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Department of Sociology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, Canberra School of Professional Studies, University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia

Roles Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft

Affiliations Department of Sociology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Roles Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing – review & editing

Affiliations Department of Sociology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Roles Funding acquisition, Methodology, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Software Systems and Cybersecurity, Faculty of IT, Monash University, Victoria, Australia

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Centre d’études européennes et de politique comparée, Sciences Po, Paris, France

• Miranda Bruce, 
• Jonathan Lusthaus, 
• Ridhi Kashyap, 
• Nigel Phair, 
• Federico Varese

• Published: April 10, 2024
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297312
• Peer Review
• Reader Comments

Cybercrime is a major challenge facing the world, with estimated costs ranging from the hundreds of millions to the trillions. Despite the threat it poses, cybercrime is somewhat an invisible phenomenon. In carrying out their virtual attacks, offenders often mask their physical locations by hiding behind online nicknames and technical protections. This means technical data are not well suited to establishing the true location of offenders and scholarly knowledge of cybercrime geography is limited. This paper proposes a solution: an expert survey. From March to October 2021 we invited leading experts in cybercrime intelligence/investigations from across the world to participate in an anonymized online survey on the geographical location of cybercrime offenders. The survey asked participants to consider five major categories of cybercrime, nominate the countries that they consider to be the most significant sources of each of these types of cybercrimes, and then rank each nominated country according to the impact, professionalism, and technical skill of its offenders. The outcome of the survey is the World Cybercrime Index, a global metric of cybercriminality organised around five types of cybercrime. The results indicate that a relatively small number of countries house the greatest cybercriminal threats. These findings partially remove the veil of anonymity around cybercriminal offenders, may aid law enforcement and policymakers in fighting this threat, and contribute to the study of cybercrime as a local phenomenon.

Citation: Bruce M, Lusthaus J, Kashyap R, Phair N, Varese F (2024) Mapping the global geography of cybercrime with the World Cybercrime Index. PLoS ONE 19(4): e0297312. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297312

Editor: Naeem Jan, Korea National University of Transportation, REPUBLIC OF KOREA

Received: October 11, 2023; Accepted: January 3, 2024; Published: April 10, 2024

Copyright: © 2024 Bruce et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: The dataset and relevant documents have been uploaded to the Open Science Framework. Data can be accessed via the following URL: https://osf.io/5s72x/?view_only=ea7ee238f3084054a6433fbab43dc9fb .

Funding: This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant agreement No. 101020598 – CRIMGOV, Federico Varese PI). FV received the award and is the Primary Investigator. The ERC did not play any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Funder website: https://erc.europa.eu/faq-programme/h2020 .

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Although the geography of cybercrime attacks has been documented, the geography of cybercrime offenders–and the corresponding level of “cybercriminality” present within each country–is largely unknown. A number of scholars have noted that valid and reliable data on offender geography are sparse [ 1 – 4 ], and there are several significant obstacles to establishing a robust metric of cybercriminality by country. First, there are the general challenges associated with the study of any hidden population, for whom no sampling frame exists [ 5 , 6 ]. If cybercriminals themselves cannot be easily accessed or reliably surveyed, then cybercriminality must be measured through a proxy. This is the second major obstacle: deciding what kind of proxy data would produce the most valid measure of cybercriminality. While there is much technical data on cybercrime attacks, this data captures artefacts of the digital infrastructure or proxy (obfuscation) services used by cybercriminals, rather than their true physical location. Non-technical data, such as legal cases, can provide geographical attribution for a small number of cases, but the data are not representative of global cybercrime. In short, the question of how best to measure the geography of cybercriminal offenders is complex and unresolved.

There is tremendous value in developing a metric for cybercrime. Cybercrime is a major challenge facing the world, with the most sober cost estimates in the hundreds of millions [ 7 , 8 ], but with high-end estimates in the trillions [ 9 ]. By accurately identifying which countries are cybercrime hotspots, the public and private sectors could concentrate their resources on these hotspots and spend less time and funds on cybercrime countermeasures in countries where the problem is limited. Whichever strategies are deployed in the fight against cybercrime (see for example [ 10 – 12 ]), they should be targeted at countries that produce the largest cybercriminal threat [ 3 ]. A measure of cybercriminality would also enable other lines of scholarly inquiry. For instance, an index of cybercriminality by country would allow for a genuine dependent variable to be deployed in studies attempting to assess which national characteristics–such as educational attainment, Internet penetration, or GDP–are associated with cybercrime [ 4 , 13 ]. These associations could also be used to identify future cybercrime hubs so that early interventions could be made in at-risk countries before a serious cybercrime problem develops. Finally, this metric would speak directly to theoretical debates on the locality of cybercrime, and organized crime more generally [ 11 – 14 ]. The challenge we have accepted is to develop a metric that is both global and robust. The following sections respectively outline the background elements of this study, the methods, the results, and then discussion and limitations.

Profit-driven cybercrime, which is the focus of this paper/research, has been studied by both social scientists and computer scientists. It has been characterised by empirical contributions that have sought to illuminate the nature and organisation of cybercrime both online and offline [ 15 – 20 ]. But, as noted above, the geography of cybercrime has only been addressed by a handful of scholars, and they have identified a number of challenges connected to existing data. In a review of existing work in this area, Lusthaus et al. [ 2 ] identify two flaws in existing cybercrime metrics: 1) their ability to correctly attribute the location of cybercrime offenders; 2) beyond a handful of examples, their ability to compare the severity and scale of cybercrime between countries.

Building attribution into a cybercrime index is challenging. Often using technical data, cybersecurity firms, law enforcement agencies and international organisations regularly publish reports that identify the major sources of cyber attacks (see for example [ 21 – 24 ]). Some of these sources have been aggregated by scholars (see [ 20 , 25 – 29 ]). But the kind of technical data contained in these reports cannot accurately measure offender location. Kigerl [ 1 ] provides some illustrative remarks:

Where the cybercriminals live is not necessarily where the cyberattacks are coming from. An offender from Romania can control zombies in a botnet, mostly located in the United States, from which to send spam to countries all over the world, with links contained in them to phishing sites located in China. The cybercriminal’s reach is not limited by national borders (p. 473).

As cybercriminals often employ proxy services to hide their IP addresses, carry out attacks across national boundaries, collaborate with partners around the world, and can draw on infrastructure based in different countries, superficial measures do not capture the true geographical distribution of these offenders. Lusthaus et al. [ 2 ] conclude that attempts to produce an index of cybercrime by country using technical data suffer from a problem of validity. “If they are a measure of anything”, they argue, “they are a measure of cyber-attack geography”, not of the geography of offenders themselves (p. 452).

Non-technical data are far better suited to incorporating attribution. Court records, indictments and other investigatory materials speak more directly to the identification of offenders and provide more granular detail on their location. But while this type of data is well matched to micro-level analysis and case studies, there are fundamental questions about the representativeness of these small samples, even if collated. First, any sample would capture cases only where cybercriminals had been prosecuted, and would not include offenders that remain at large. Second, if the aim was to count the number of cybercrime prosecutions by country, this may reflect the seriousness with which various countries take cybercrime law enforcement or the resources they have to pursue it, rather than the actual level of cybercrime within each country (for a discussion see [ 30 , 31 ]). Given such concerns, legal data is also not an appropriate approach for such a research program.

Furthermore, to carry out serious study on this topic, a cybercrime metric should aim to include as many countries as possible, and the sample must allow for variation so that high and low cybercrime countries can be compared. If only a handful of widely known cybercrime hubs are studied, this will result in selection on the dependent variable. The obvious challenge in providing such a comparative scale is the lack of good quality data to devise it. As an illustration, in their literature review Hall et al. [ 10 ] identify the “dearth of robust data” on the geographical location of cybercriminals, which means they are only able to include six countries in their final analysis (p. 285. See also [ 4 , 32 , 33 ]).

Considering the weaknesses within both existing technical and legal data discussed above, Lusthaus et al. [ 2 ] argue for the use of an expert survey to establish a global metric of cybercriminality. Expert survey data “can be extrapolated and operationalised”, and “attribution can remain a key part of the survey, as long as the participants in the sample have an extensive knowledge of cybercriminals and their operations” (p. 453). Up to this point, no such study has been produced. Such a survey would need to be very carefully designed for the resulting data to be both reliable and valid. One criticism of past cybercrime research is that surveys were used whenever other data was not immediately available, and that they were not always designed with care (for a discussion see [ 34 ]).

In response to the preceding considerations, we designed an expert survey in 2020, refined it through focus groups, and deployed it throughout 2021. The survey asked participants to consider five major types of cybercrime– Technical products/services ; Attacks and extortion ; Data/identity theft ; Scams ; and Cashing out/money laundering –and nominate the countries that they consider to be the most significant sources of each of these cybercrime types. Participants then rated each nominated country according to the impact of the offenses produced there, and the professionalism and technical skill of the offenders based there. Using the expert responses, we generated scores for each type of cybercrime, which we then combined into an overall metric of cybercriminality by country: the World Cybercrime Index (WCI). The WCI achieves our initial goal to devise a valid measure of cybercrime hub location and significance, and is the first step in our broader aim to understand the local dimensions of cybercrime production across the world.

Participants

Identifying and recruiting cybercrime experts is challenging. Much like the hidden population of cybercriminals we were trying to study, cybercrime experts themselves are also something of a hidden population. Due to the nature of their work, professionals working in the field of cybercrime tend to be particularly wary of unsolicited communication. There is also the problem of determining who is a true cybercrime expert, and who is simply presenting themselves as one. We designed a multi-layered sampling method to address such challenges.

The heart of our strategy involved purposive sampling. For an index based entirely on expert opinion, ensuring the quality of these experts (and thereby the quality of our survey results) was of the utmost importance. We defined “expertise” as adult professionals who have been engaged in cybercrime intelligence, investigation, and/or attribution for a minimum of five years and had a reputation for excellence amongst their peers. Only currently- or recently-practicing intelligence officers and investigators were included in the participant pool. While participants could be from either the public or private sectors, we explicitly excluded professionals working in the field of cybercrime research who are not actively involved in tracking offenders, which includes writers and academics. In short, only experts with first-hand knowledge of cybercriminals are included in our sample. To ensure we had the leading experts from a wide range of backgrounds and geographical areas, we adopted two approaches for recruitment. We searched extensively through a range of online sources including social media (e.g. LinkedIn), corporate sites, news articles and cybercrime conference programs to identify individuals who met our inclusion criteria. We then faced a second challenge of having to find or discern contact information for these individuals.

Complementing this strategy, the authors also used their existing relationships with recognised cybercrime experts to recruit participants using the “snowball” method [ 35 ]. This both enhanced access and provided a mechanism for those we knew were bona fide experts to recommend other bona fide experts. The majority of our participants were recruited in this manner, either directly through our initial contacts or through a series of referrals that followed. But it is important to note that this snowball sampling fell under our broader purposive sampling strategy. That is, all the original “seeds” had to meet our inclusion criteria of being a top expert in the first instance. Any connections we were offered also had to meet our criteria or we would not invite them to participate. Another important aspect of this sampling strategy is that we did not rely on only one gatekeeper, but numerous, often unrelated, individuals who helped us with introductions. This approach reduced bias in the sample. It was particularly important to deploy a number of different “snowballs” to ensure that we included experts from each region of the world (Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe, North America and South America) and from a range of relevant professional backgrounds. We limited our sampling strategy to English speakers. The survey itself was likewise written in English. The use of English was partly driven by the resources available for this study, but the population of cybercrime experts is itself very global, with many attending international conferences and cooperating with colleagues from across the world. English is widely spoken within this community. While we expect the gains to be limited, future surveys will be translated into some additional languages (e.g. Spanish and Chinese) to accommodate any non-English speaking experts that we may not otherwise be able to reach.

Our survey design, detailed below, received ethics approval from the Human Research Advisory Panel (HREAP A) at the University of New South Wales in Australia, approval number HC200488, and the Research Ethics Committee of the Department of Sociology (DREC) at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, approval number SOC_R2_001_C1A_20_23. Participants were recruited in waves between 1 August 2020 and 30 September 2021. All participants provided consent to participate in the focus groups, pilot survey, and final survey.

Survey design

The survey comprised three stages. First, we conducted three focus groups with seven experts in cybercrime intelligence/investigations to evaluate our initial assumptions, concepts, and framework. These experts were recruited because they had reputations as some of the very top experts in the field; they represented a range of backgrounds in terms of their own geographical locations and expertise across different types of cybercrime; and they spanned both the public and private sectors. In short, they offered a cross-section of the survey sample we aimed to recruit. These focus groups informed several refinements to the survey design and specific terms to make them better comprehensible to participants. Some of the key terms, such as “professionalism” and “impact”, were a direct result of this process. Second, some participants from the focus groups then completed a pilot version of the survey, alongside others who had not taken part in these focus groups, who could offer a fresh perspective. This allowed us to test technical components, survey questions, and user experience. The pilot participants provided useful feedback and prompted a further refinement of our approach. The final survey was released online in March 2021 and closed in October 2021. We implemented several elements to ensure data quality, including a series of preceding statements about time expectations, attention checks, and visual cues throughout the survey. These elements significantly increased the likelihood that our participants were both suitable and would provide full and thoughtful responses.

The introduction to the survey outlined the survey’s two main purposes: to identify which countries are the most significant sources of profit-driven cybercrime, and to determine how impactful the cybercrime is in these locations. Participants were reminded that state-based actors and offenders driven primarily by personal interests (for instance, cyberbullying or harassment) should be excluded from their consideration. We defined the “source” of cybercrime as the country where offenders are primarily based, rather than their nationality. To maintain a level of consistency, we made the decision to only include countries formally recognised by the United Nations. We initially developed seven categories of cybercrime to be included in the survey, based on existing research. But during the focus groups and pilot survey, our experts converged on five categories as the most significant cybercrime threats on a global scale:

• Technical products/services (e.g. malware coding, botnet access, access to compromised systems, tool production).
• Attacks and extortion (e.g. DDoS attacks, ransomware).
• Data/identity theft (e.g. hacking, phishing, account compromises, credit card comprises).
• Scams (e.g. advance fee fraud, business email compromise, online auction fraud).
• Cashing out/money laundering (e.g. credit card fraud, money mules, illicit virtual currency platforms).

After being prompted with these descriptions and a series of images of world maps to ensure participants considered a wide range of regions/countries, participants were asked to nominate up to five countries that they believed were the most significant sources of each of these types of cybercrime. Countries could be listed in any order; participants were not instructed to rank them. Nominating countries was optional and participants were free to skip entire categories if they wished. Participants were then asked to rate each of the countries they nominated against three measures: how impactful the cybercrime is, how professional the cybercrime offenders are, and how technically skilled the cybercrime offenders are. Across each of these three measures, participants were asked to assign scores on a Likert-type scale between 1 (e.g. least professional) to 10 (e.g. most professional). Nominating and then rating countries was repeated for all five cybercrime categories.

This process, of nominating and then rating countries across each category, introduces a potential limitation in the survey design: the possibility of survey response fatigue. If a participant nominated the maximum number of countries across each cybercrime category– 25 countries–by the end of the survey they would have completed 75 Likert-type scales. The repetition of this task, paired with the consideration that it requires, has the potential to introduce respondent fatigue as the survey progresses, in the form of response attrition, an increase in careless responses, and/or increased likelihood of significantly higher/lower scores given. This is a common phenomenon in long-form surveys [ 36 ], and especially online surveys [ 37 , 38 ]. Jeong et al [ 39 ], for instance, found that questions asked near the end of a 2.5 hour survey were 10–64% more likely to be skipped than those at the beginning. We designed the survey carefully, refined with the aid of focus groups and a pilot, to ensure that only the most essential questions were asked. As such, the survey was not overly long (estimated to take 30 minutes). To accommodate any cognitive load, participants were allowed to complete the survey anytime within a two-week window. Their progress was saved after each session, which enabled participants to take breaks between completing each section (a suggestion made by Jeong et al [ 39 ]). Crucially, throughout survey recruitment, participants were informed that the survey is time-intensive and required significant attention. At the beginning of the survey, participants were instructed not to undertake the survey unless they could allocate 30 minutes to it. This approach pre-empted survey fatigue by discouraging those likely to lose interest from participating. This compounds the fact that only experts with a specific/strong interest in the subject matter of the survey were invited to participate. Survey fatigue is addressed further in the Discussion section, where we provide an analysis suggesting little evidence of participant fatigue.

In sum, we designed the survey to protect against various sources of bias and error, and there are encouraging signs that the effects of these issues in the data are limited (see Discussion ). Yet expert surveys are inherently prone to some types of bias and response issues; in the WCI, the issue of selection and self-selection within our pool of experts, as well as geo-political biases that may lead to systematic over- or under-scoring of certain countries, is something we considered closely. We discuss these issues in detail in the subsection on Limitations below.

This “type” score is then multiplied by the proportion of experts who nominated that country. Within each cybercrime type, a country could be nominated a possible total of 92 times–once per participant. We then multiply this weighted score by ten to produce a continuous scale out of 100 (see Eq (2) ). This process prevents countries that received high scores, but a low number of nominations, from receiving artificially high rankings.

The analyses for this paper were performed in R. All data and code have been made publicly available so that our analysis can be reproduced and extended.

We contacted 245 individuals to participate in the survey, of which 147 agreed and were sent invitation links to participate. Out of these 147, a total of 92 people completed the survey, giving us an overall response rate of 37.5%. Given the expert nature of the sample, this is a high response rate (for a detailed discussion see [ 40 ]), and one just below what Wu, Zhao, and Fils-Aime estimate of response rates for general online surveys in social science: 44% [ 41 ]. The survey collected information on the participants’ primary nationality and their current country of residence. Four participants chose not to identify their nationality. Overall, participants represented all five major geopolitical regions (Africa, the Asia-Pacific, Europe, North America and South America), both in nationality and residence, though the distribution was uneven and concentrated in particular regions/countries. There were 8 participants from Africa, 11 participants from the Asia Pacific, 27 from North America, and 39 from Europe. South America was the least represented region with only 3 participants. A full breakdown of participants’ nationality, residence, and areas of expertise is included in the Supporting Information document (see S1 Appendix ).

Table 1 shows the scores for the top fifteen countries of the WCI overall index. Each entry shows the country, along with the mean score (out of 10) averaged across the participants who nominated this country, for three categories: impact, professionalism, and technical skill. This is followed by each country’s WCI overall and WCI type scores. Countries are ordered by their WCI overall score. Each country’s highest WCI type scores are highlighted. Full indices that include all 197 UN-recognised countries can be found in S1 Indices .

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Some initial patterns can be observed from this table, as well as the full indices in the supplementary document (see S1 Indices ). First, a small number of countries hold consistently high ranks for cybercrime. Six countries–China, Russia, Ukraine, the US, Romania, and Nigeria–appear in the top 10 of every WCI type index, including the WCI overall index. Aside from Romania, all appear in the top three at least once. While appearing in a different order, the first ten countries in the Technical products/services and Attacks and extortion indices are the same. Second, despite this small list of countries regularly appearing as cybercrime hubs, the survey results capture a broad geographical diversity. All five geopolitical regions are represented across each type. Overall, 97 distinct countries were nominated by at least one expert. This can be broken down into the cybercrime categories. Technical products/services includes 41 different countries; Attacks and extortion 43; Data/identity theft 51; Scams 49; and Cashing out/money laundering 63.

Some key findings emerge from these results, which are further illustrated by the following Figs 1 and 2 . First, cybercrime is not universally distributed. Certain countries are cybercrime hubs, while many others are not associated with cybercriminality in a serious way. Second, countries that are cybercrime hubs specialise in particular types of cybercrime. That is, despite a small number of countries being leading producers of cybercrime, there is meaningful variation between them both across categories, and in relation to scores for impact, professionalism and technical skill. Third, the results show a longer list of cybercrime-producing countries than are usually included in publications on the geography of cybercrime. As the survey captures leading producers of cybercrime, rather than just any country where cybercrime is present, this suggests that, even if a small number of countries are of serious concern, and close to 100 are of little concern at all, the remaining half are of at least moderate concern.

Base map and data from OpenStreetMap and OpenStreetMap Foundation.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297312.g001

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297312.g002

To examine further the second finding concerning hub specialisation, we calculated an overall “Technicality score”–or “T-score”–for the top 15 countries of the WCI overall index. We assigned a value from 2 to -2 to each type of cybercrime to designate the level of technical complexity involved. Technical products/services is the most technically complex type (2), followed by Attacks and extortion (1), Data/identity theft (0), Scams (-1), and finally Cashing out and money laundering (-2), which has very low technical complexity. We then multiplied each country’s WCI score for each cybercrime type by its assigned value–for instance, a Scams WCI score of 5 would be multiplied by -1, with a final modified score of -5. As a final step, for each country, we added all of their modified WCI scores across all five categories together to generate the T-score. Fig 3 plots the top 15 WCI overall countries’ T-scores, ordering them by score. Countries with negative T-scores are highlighted in red, and countries with positive scores are in black.

Negative values correspond to lower technicality, positive values to higher technicality.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297312.g003

The T-score is best suited to characterising a given hub’s specialisation. For instance, as the line graph makes clear, Russia and Ukraine are highly technical cybercrime hubs, whereas Nigerian cybercriminals are engaged in less technical forms of cybercrime. But for countries that lie close to the centre (0), the story is more complex. Some may specialise in cybercrime types with middling technical complexity (e.g. Data/identity theft ). Others may specialise in both high- and low-tech crimes. In this sample of countries, India (-6.02) somewhat specialises in Scams but is otherwise a balanced hub, whereas Romania (10.41) and the USA (-2.62) specialise in both technical and non-technical crimes, balancing their scores towards zero. In short, each country has a distinct profile, indicating a unique local dimension.

This paper introduces a global and robust metric of cybercriminality–the World Cybercrime Index. The WCI moves past previous technical measures of cyber attack geography to establish a more focused measure of the geography of cybercrime offenders. Elicited through an expert survey, the WCI shows that cybercrime is not universally distributed. The key theoretical contribution of this index is to illustrate that cybercrime, often seen as a fluid and global type of organized crime, actually has a strong local dimension (in keeping with broader arguments by some scholars, such as [ 14 , 42 ]).

While we took a number of steps to ensure our sample of experts was geographically representative, the sample is skewed towards some regions (such as Europe) and some countries (such as the US). This may simply reflect the high concentration of leading cybercrime experts in these locations. But it is also possible this distribution reflects other factors, including the authors’ own social networks; the concentration of cybercrime taskforces and organisations in particular countries; the visibility of different nations on networking platforms like LinkedIn; and also perhaps norms of enthusiasm or suspicion towards foreign research projects, both inside particular organisations and between nations.

To better understand what biases might have influenced the survey data, we analysed participant rating behaviours with a series of linear regressions. Numerical ratings were the response and different participant characteristics–country of nationality; country of residence; crime type expertise; and regional expertise–were the predictors. Our analysis found evidence (p < 0.05) that participants assigned higher ratings to the countr(ies) they either reside in or are citizens of, though this was not a strong or consistent result. For instance, regional experts did not consistently rate their region of expertise more highly than other regions. European and North American experts, for example, rated countries from these regions lower than countries from other regions. Our analysis of cybercrime type expertise showed even less systematic rating behaviour, with no regression yielding a statistically significant (p < 0.05) result. Small sample sizes across other known participant characteristics meant that further analyses of rating behaviour could not be performed. This applied to, for instance, whether residents and citizens of the top ten countries in the WCI nominated their own countries more or less often than other experts. On this point: 46% of participants nominated their own country at some point in the survey, but the majority (83%) of nominations were for a country different to the participant’s own country of residence or nationality. This suggested limited bias towards nominating one’s own country. Overall, these analyses point to an encouraging observation: while there is a slight home-country bias, this does not systematically result in higher rating behaviour. Longitudinal data from future surveys, as well as a larger participant pool, will better clarify what other biases may affect rating behaviour.

There is little evidence to suggest that survey fatigue affected our data. As the survey progressed, the heterogeneity of nominated countries across all experts increased, from 41 different countries nominated in the first category to 63 different countries nominated in the final category. If fatigue played a significant role in the results then we would expect this number to decrease, as participants were not required to nominate countries within a category and would have been motivated to nominate fewer countries to avoid extending their survey time. We further investigated the data for evidence of survey fatigue in two additional ways: by performing a Mann-Kendall/Sen’s slope trend test (MK/S) to determine whether scores skewed significantly upwards or downwards towards the end of the survey; and by compiling an intra-individual response variability (IRV) index to search for long strings of repeated scores at the end of the survey [ 43 ]. The MK/S test was marginally statistically significant (p<0.048), but the results indicated that scores trended downwards only minimally (-0.002 slope coefficient). Likewise, while the IRV index uncovered a small group of participants (n = 5) who repeatedly inserted the same score, this behaviour was not more likely to happen at the end of the survey (see S7 and S8 Tables in S1 Appendix ).

It is encouraging that there is at least some external validation for the WCI’s highest ranked countries. Steenbergen and Marks [ 44 ] recommend that data produced from expert judgements should “demonstrate convergent validity with other measures of [the topic]–that is, the experts should provide evaluations of the same […] phenomenon that other measurement instruments pick up.” (p. 359) Most studies of the global cybercrime geography are, as noted in the introduction, based on technical measures that cannot accurately establish the true physical location of offenders (for example [ 1 , 4 , 28 , 33 , 45 ]). Comparing our results to these studies would therefore be of little value, as the phenomena being measured differs: they are measuring attack infrastructure, whereas the WCI measures offender location. Instead, looking at in-depth qualitative cybercrime case studies would provide a better comparison, at least for the small number of higher ranked countries. Though few such studies into profit-driven cybercrime exist, and the number of countries included are limited, we can see that the top ranked countries in the WCI match the key cybercrime producing countries discussed in the qualitative literature (see for example [ 3 , 10 , 32 , 46 – 50 ]). Beyond this qualitative support, our sampling strategy–discussed in the Methods section above–is our most robust control for ensuring the validity of our data.

Along with contributing to theoretical debates on the (local) nature of organized crime [ 1 , 14 ], this index can also contribute to policy discussions. For instance, there is an ongoing debate as to the best approaches to take in cybercrime reduction, whether this involves improving cyber-law enforcement capacity [ 3 , 51 ], increasing legitimate job opportunities and access to youth programs for potential offenders [ 52 , 53 ], strengthening international agreements and law harmonization [ 54 – 56 ], developing more sophisticated and culturally-specific social engineering countermeasures [ 57 ], or reducing corruption [ 3 , 58 ]. As demonstrated by the geographical, economic, and political diversity of the top 15 countries (see Table 1 ), the likelihood that a single strategy will work in all cases is low. If cybercrime is driven by local factors, then mitigating it may require a localised approach that considers the different features of cybercrime in these contexts. But no matter what strategies are applied in the fight against cybercrime, they should be targeted at the countries that produce the most cybercrime, or at least produce the most impactful forms of it [ 3 ]. An index is a valuable resource for determining these countries and directing resources appropriately. Future research that explains what is driving cybercrime in these locations might also suggest more appropriate means for tackling the problem. Such an analysis could examine relevant correlates, such as corruption, law enforcement capacity, internet penetration, education levels and so on to inform/test a theoretically-driven model of what drives cybercrime production in some locations, but not others. It also might be possible to make a kind of prediction: to identify those nations that have not yet emerged as cybercrime hubs but may in the future. This would allow an early warning system of sorts for policymakers seeking to prevent cybercrime around the world.

Limitations

In addition to the points discussed above, the findings of the WCI should be considered in light of some remaining limitations. Firstly, as noted in the methods, our pool of experts was not as large or as globally representative as we had hoped. Achieving a significant response rate is a common issue across all surveys, and is especially difficult in those that employ the snowball technique [ 59 ] and also attempt to recruit experts [ 60 ]. However, ensuring that our survey data captures the most accurate picture of cybercrime activity is an essential aspect of the project, and the under-representation of experts from Africa and South America is noteworthy. More generally, our sample size (n = 92) is relatively small. Future iterations of the WCI survey should focus on recruiting a larger pool of experts, especially those from under-represented regions. However, this is a small and hard-to-reach population, which likely means the sample size will not grow significantly. While this limits statistical power, it is also a strength of the survey: by ensuring that we only recruit the top cybercrime experts in the world, the weight and validity of our data increases.

Secondly, though we developed our cybercrime types and measures with expert focus groups, the definitions used in the WCI will always be contestable. For instance, a small number of comments left at the end of the survey indicated that the Cashing out/money laundering category was unclear to some participants, who were unsure whether they should nominate the country in which these schemes are organised or the countries in which the actual cash out occurs. A small number of participants also commented that they were not sure whether the ‘impact’ of a country’s cybercrime output should be measured in terms of cost, social change, or some other metric. We limited any such uncertainties by running a series of focus groups to check that our categories were accurate to the cybercrime reality and comprehensible to practitioners in this area. We also ran a pilot version of the survey. The beginning of the survey described the WCI’s purpose and terms of reference, and participants were able to download a document that described the project’s methodology in further detail. Each time a participant was prompted to nominate countries as a significant source of a type of cybercrime, the type was re-defined and examples of offences under that type were provided. However, the examples were not exhaustive and the definitions were brief. This was done partly to avoid significantly lengthening the survey with detailed definitions and clarifications. We also wanted to avoid over-defining the cybercrime types so that any new techniques or attack types that emerged while the survey ran would be included in the data. Nonetheless, there will always remain some elasticity around participant interpretations of the survey.

Finally, although we restricted the WCI to profit-driven activity, the distinction between cybercrime that is financially-motivated, and cybercrime that is motivated by other interests, is sometimes blurred. Offenders who typically commit profit-driven offences may also engage in state-sponsored activities. Some of the countries with high rankings within the WCI may shelter profit-driven cybercriminals who are protected by corrupt state actors of various kinds, or who have other kinds of relationships with the state. Actors in these countries may operate under the (implicit or explicit) sanctioning of local police or government officials to engage in cybercrime. Thus while the WCI excludes state-based attacks, it may include profit-driven cybercriminals who are protected by states. Investigating the intersection between profit-driven cybercrime and the state is a strong focus in our ongoing and future research. If we continue to see evidence that these activities can overlap (see for example [ 32 , 61 – 63 ]), then any models explaining the drivers of cybercrime will need to address this increasingly important aspect of local cybercrime hubs.

This study makes use of an expert survey to better measure the geography of profit-driven cybercrime and presents the output of this effort: the World Cybercrime Index. This index, organised around five major categories of cybercrime, sheds light on the geographical concentrations of financially-motivated cybercrime offenders. The findings reveal that a select few countries pose the most significant cybercriminal threat. By illustrating that hubs often specialise in particular forms of cybercrime, the WCI also offers valuable insights into the local dimension of cybercrime. This study provides a foundation for devising a theoretically-driven model to explain why some countries produce more cybercrime than others. By contributing to a deeper understanding of cybercrime as a localised phenomenon, the WCI may help lift the veil of anonymity that protects cybercriminals and thereby enhance global efforts to combat this evolving threat.

Supporting information

S1 indices. wci indices..

Full indices for the WCI Overall and each WCI Type.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297312.s001

S1 Appendix. Supporting information.

Details of respondent characteristics and analysis of rating behaviour.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297312.s002

Acknowledgments

The data collection for this project was carried out as part of a partnership between the Department of Sociology, University of Oxford and UNSW Canberra Cyber. The analysis and writing phases received support from CRIMGOV. Fig 1 was generated using information from OpenStreetMap and OpenStreetMap Foundation, which is made available under the Open Database License.

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Important Cyber Law Case Studies

1.Pune Citibank MphasiS Call Center Fraud Some ex-employees of BPO arm of MPhasiS Ltd MsourcE defrauded US Customers of Citibank to the tune of Rs 1.5 crores. It was one of those cyber crime cases that raised concerns of many kinds including the role of "Data Protection". The crime was obviously committed using "Unauthorized Access" to the "Electronic Account Space" of the customers. It is therefore firmly within the domain of "Cyber Crimes". ITA-2000 is versatile enough to accommodate the aspects of crime not covered by ITA-2000 but covered by other statutes since any IPC offence committed with the use of "Electronic Documents" can be considered as a crime with the use of a "Written Documents". "Cheating", "Conspiracy", "Breach of Trust", etc. are therefore applicable in the above case in addition to the section in ITA-2000. Under ITA-2000 the offence is recognized both under Section 66 and Section 43. Accordingly, the persons involved are liable for imprisonment and fine as well as a liability to pay damages to the victims to the maximum extent of Rs 1 crore per victim for which the "Adjudication Process" can be invoked.

2.SONY.SAMBANDH.COM CASE India saw its first cybercrime conviction in 2013. It all began after a complaint was filed by Sony India Private Ltd, which runs a website called www.sony-sambandh.com, targeting Non-Resident Indians. The website enables NRIs to send Sony products to their friends and relatives in India after they pay for it online. The company undertakes to deliver the products to the concerned recipients. In May 2002, according to the cybercrime case study, someone logged onto the website under the identity of Barbara Campa and ordered a Sony Colour Television set and a cordless headphone. She gave her credit card number for payment and requested the products to be delivered to Arif Azim in Noida. The payment was duly cleared by the credit card agency, and the transaction was processed. After following the relevant procedures of due diligence and checking, the company delivered the items to Arif Azim. At the time of delivery, the company took digital photographs showing the delivery being accepted by Arif Azim. The transaction closed at that, but after one and a half months the credit card agency informed the company that this was an unauthorized transaction as the real owner had denied having made the purchase. The company lodged a complaint about online cheating at the Central Bureau of Investigation which registered a case under Section 418, 419 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code. The matter was investigated, and Arif Azim was arrested. Investigations revealed that Arif Azim while working at a call centre in Noida gained access to the credit card number of an American national which he misused on the company's site. The CBI recovered the colour television and the cordless headphone, in this one of a kind cyber fraud case. In this matter, the CBI had evidence to prove their case, and so the accused admitted his guilt. The court convicted Arif Azim under Section 418, 419 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code - this being the first time that cybercrime has been convicted. The court, however, felt that as the accused was a young boy of 24 years and a first-time convict, a lenient view needed to be taken. The court, therefore, released the accused on probation for one year. The judgment is of immense significance for the entire nation. Besides being the first conviction in a cybercrime matter, it has shown that the Indian Penal Code can be effectively applied to certain categories of cyber crimes which are not covered under the Information Technology Act 2000. Secondly, a judgment of this sort sends out a clear message to all that the law cannot be taken for a ride.

3. The Bank NSP Case One of the leading cybercrime cases is the Bank NSP case is the one where a management trainee of the bank was engaged to be married. The couple exchanged many emails using the company computers. After some time the two broke up and the girl created fraudulent email ids such as "indianbarassociations" and sent emails to the boy's foreign clients. She used the bank’s computer to do this. The boy's company lost a large number of clients and took the bank to court. The bank was held liable for the emails sent using the bank's system.

4. Andhra Pradesh Tax Case Dubious tactics of a prominent businessman, from Andhra Pradesh, were exposed after officials of the department got hold of computers, used by the accused in one of the many cyber fraud cases in India. The owner of a plastics firm was arrested and Rs 22 crore cash, was recovered from his house by sleuths of the Vigilance Department. They sought an explanation from him regarding the unaccounted cash within 10 days. The accused submitted 6,000 vouchers, to prove the legitimacy of trade and thought his offence would go undetected but after careful scrutiny of vouchers and contents of his computers, it was revealed that all of them were made after the raids were conducted. It was later revealed that the accused was running five businesses under the guise of one company and used fake and computerised vouchers to show sales records and save tax.

5.SMC Pneumatics (India) Pvt. Ltd. vs. Jogesh Kwatra In India's first case of cyber defamation, the High Court of Delhi assumed jurisdiction over a matter where a corporation's reputation was being defamed through emails and passed an important ex-parte injunction. Amongst the many cyber cases in India, in this case, the defendant Jogesh Kwatra being an employee of the plaintiff company started sending derogatory, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, filthy and abusive emails to his employers as also to different subsidiaries of the said company all over the world with the aim to defame the company and its Managing Director Mr. R K Malhotra. The plaintiff filed a suit for permanent injunction restraining the defendant from doing his illegal acts of sending derogatory emails to the plaintiff. On behalf of the plaintiff, it was contended that the emails sent by the defendant were distinctly obscene, vulgar, abusive, intimidating, humiliating and defamatory in nature. Counsel further argued that the aim of sending the said emails was to malign the high reputation of the plaintiff all over India and the world. He further contended that the acts of the defendant in sending the emails had resulted in an invasion of the legal rights of the plaintiff. Further, the defendant is under a duty not to send the aforesaid emails. It is pertinent to note that after the plaintiff company discovered the said employee could be indulging in the matter of sending abusive emails, the plaintiff terminated the services of the defendant. After hearing detailed arguments of Counsel for Plaintiff, Hon'ble Judge of the Delhi High Court passed an ex-parte ad interim injunction, observing that a prima facie case had been made out by the plaintiff. Consequently, in this cyber fraud case in India, the Delhi High Court restrained the defendant from sending derogatory, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, humiliating and abusive emails, either to the plaintiff or to its sister subsidiaries all over the world, including their Managing Directors and their Sales and Marketing departments. Further, Hon'ble Judge also restrained the defendant from publishing, transmitting or causing to be published any information in the actual world, as also in cyberspace, which is derogatory or defamatory or abusive. This order of Delhi High Court assumes tremendous significance as this is the first time that an Indian Court assumes jurisdiction in a matter concerning cyber defamation and grants an ex-parte injunction restraining the defendant from defaming the plaintiff by sending derogatory, defamatory, abusive and obscene emails either to the plaintiffs or their subsidiaries.

6. Bazee.com case CEO of Bazee.com was arrested in December 2004 because a CD with objectionable material was being sold on the website. The CD was also being sold in the markets in Delhi. The Mumbai Police and the Delhi Police got into action. The CEO was later released on bail. This opened up the question as to what kind of distinction we draw between Internet Service Provider and Content Provider. The burden rests on the accused that he was the Service Provider and not the Content Provider. It also raises a lot of issues regarding how the police should handle cybercrime cases.

7. State of Tamil Nadu Vs Suhas Katti The Case of Suhas Katti is notable for the fact that the conviction was achieved successfully within a relatively quick time of 7 months from the filing of the FIR, making it one of the notable cyberlaw cases in India. Considering that similar cases have been pending in other states for a much longer time, the efficient handling of the case which happened to be the first case of the Chennai Cyber Crime Cell going to trial deserves a special mention. The case is related to the posting of obscene, defamatory and annoying message about a divorced woman in the Yahoo message group. E-mails were also forwarded to the victim for information by the accused through a false e-mail account opened by him in the name of the victim. The posting of the message resulted in annoying phone calls to the lady in the belief that she was soliciting. Based on a complaint made by the victim in February 2004, the Police traced the accused to Mumbai and arrested him within the next few days. The accused was a known family friend of the victim and was reportedly interested in marrying her. She, however, married another person. This marriage later ended in divorce, and the accused started contacting her once again. On her reluctance to marry him, the accused took up harassment through the Internet. On 24-3-2004, a Charge Sheet was filed, u/s 67 of the IT Act 2000, 469 and 509 IPC before The Hon'ble Addl. CMM Egmore by citing 18 witnesses and 34 documents and material objects. The same was taken on file in C.C.NO.4680/2004. On the prosecution side, 12 witnesses were examined, and entire documents were marked as Exhibits. The Defence argued, in this cyber crime case, that the offending emails would have been given either by the ex-husband of the complainant or the complainant herself to implicate the accused as accused alleged to have turned down the request of the complainant to marry her. Further, the defence counsel argued that some of the documentary evidence was not sustainable under Section 65 B of the Indian Evidence Act. However, the court relied upon the expert witnesses, and other evidence produced before it, including the witnesses of the Cyber Cafe owners, and came to the conclusion that the crime was proved. Ld. Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Egmore, delivered the judgement on 5-11-04 as follows: "The accused is found guilty of offences under section 469, 509 IPC and 67 of the IT Act 2000, and the accused is convicted and sentenced for the offence to undergo RI for 2 years, under 469 IPC, and to pay a fine of Rs.500/- and for the offence u/s 509 IPC sentenced to undergo 1 year simple imprisonment and to pay a fine of Rs.500/- and for the offence u/s 67 of the IT Act 2000 to undergo RI for 2 years and to pay a fine of Rs.4000/-. All sentences to run concurrently." The accused paid the fine amount, and he was lodged at Central Prison, Chennai. This is considered as the first case convicted under section 67 of the Information Technology Act 2000 in India.

8. Nasscom vs. Ajay Sood & Others In a landmark judgment in the case of National Association of Software and Service Companies vs. Ajay Sood & Others, delivered in March, '05, the Delhi High Court declared 'phishing' on the internet to be an illegal act, entailing an injunction and recovery of damages. A cybercrime case study has been conducted on the same. Elaborating on the concept of 'phishing', in order to lay down a precedent in India, the court stated that it is a form of internet fraud where a person pretends to be a legitimate association, such as a bank or an insurance company in order to extract personal data from a customer such as access codes, passwords, etc. Personal data so collected by misrepresenting the identity of the legitimate party is commonly used for the collecting party's advantage. The court also stated, by way of an example, that typical phishing scams involve persons who pretend to represent online banks and siphon cash from e-banking accounts after conning consumers into handing over confidential banking details. The Delhi HC stated that, even though there is no specific legislation in India to penalize phishing, it held phishing to be an illegal act, by defining it under Indian law as "a misrepresentation made in the course of trade, leading to confusion, as to the source and origin of the email causing immense harm, not only to the consumer, but even to the person whose name, identity or password is misused." The court held the act of phishing as passing off and tarnishing the plaintiff's image. The plaintiff, in this case, was the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), India's premier software association. The defendants were operating a placement agency involved in headhunting and recruitment. In order to obtain personal data, which they could use for purposes of headhunting, the defendants composed and sent emails to third parties, in the name of Nasscom. The high court recognised the trademark rights of the plaintiff and passed an ex-parte ad interim injunction restraining the defendants from using the trade name or any other name deceptively similar to Nasscom. The court further restrained the defendants from holding themselves out as being associated with or a part of Nasscom. The court appointed a commission to conduct a search at the defendants' premises. Two hard disks of the computers, from which the fraudulent e-mails were sent by the defendants to various parties, were taken into custody by the local commissioner appointed by the court. The offending emails were then downloaded from the hard disks and presented as evidence in court. During the progress of the cyberlaw case in India, it became clear that the defendants, in whose names the offending e-mails were sent, were fictitious identities created by an employee on defendants' instructions, to avoid recognition and legal action. On discovery of this fraudulent act, fictitious names were deleted from the array of parties as defendants in the case. Subsequently, defendants admitted to their illegal acts and the parties settled the matter through the recording of a compromise in the suit proceedings. According to the terms of compromise, the defendants agreed to pay a sum of Rs1.6 million to the plaintiff as damages for violation of the plaintiff's trademark rights. The court also ordered the hard disks seized from the defendants' premises to be handed over to the plaintiff who would be the owner of the hard disks. This case achieves clear milestones: It brings the act of "phishing" into the ambit of Indian laws, even in the absence of specific legislation; it clears the misconception that there is no "damages culture" in India for violation of IP rights. this case reaffirms IP owners' faith in the Indian judicial system's ability and willingness to protect intangible property rights and send a strong message to IP owners that they can do business in India without sacrificing their IP rights.

9. Cyber Attack on Cosmos Bank In August 2018, the Pune branch of Cosmos bank was drained of Rs 94 crores, in an extremely bold cyber attack. By hacking into the main server, the thieves were able to transfer the money to a bank in Hong Kong. Along with this, the hackers made their way into the ATM server, to gain details of various VISA and Rupay debit cards. The switching system i.e. the link between the centralized system and the payment gateway was attacked, meaning neither the bank nor the account holders caught wind of the money being transferred. According to the cybercrime case study internationally, a total of 14,000 transactions were carried out, spanning across 28 countries using 450 cards. Nationally, 2,800 transactions using 400 cards were carried out. This was one of its kinds, and in fact, the first malware attack that stopped all communication between the bank and the payment gateway.

10. Tampering with Computer Source Documents In a case of manipulation, Tata Indicom employees were taken into custody in relation to the tampering of the electronic 32-bit number (ESN) that is programmed into cell phones. The theft was for Reliance Intercom. In a verdict on a later date, the court said that since the source code was manipulated, it calls the use of Section 65 under the Information Technology Act.

11. BSNL, Unauthorized Access In a leading cybercrime case, the Joint Academic Network (JANET) was hacked by the accused, after which he denied access to the authorized users by changing passwords along with deleting and adding files. Making it look like he was authorized personnel, he made changes in the BSNL computer database in their internet users’ accounts. When the CBI carried out investigations after registering a cybercrime case against the accused, they found that the broadband Internet was being used without any authorization. The accused used to hack into the server from various cities like Chennai and Bangalore, amongst others. This investigation was carried after the Press Information Bureau, Chennai, filed a complaint. In the verdict by the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Egmore, Chennai, the accused from Bangalore would be sent to prison for a year and will have to pay a fine of Rs 5,000 under Section 420 IPC and Section 66 of the IT Act.

12. BPO Fraud In another incident involving MphasiS, India, four call centre employees gained the PIN codes, from four of the MphasiS’s client, Citi Group, in spite of not being authorized to do so. Various accounts were opened in Indian banks, under false names and within two months, they managed to transfer money to these accounts from Citigroup customers accounts using their PINs and other personal information. This cyber fraud case occurred in December 2004, but it wasn’t until April 2005 that the Indian police were able to identify the individuals to make an arrest. It was made possible with a tip provided by a U.S. bank when the accused tried to withdraw cash from these fake accounts. From the $426,000 that was stolen, only $230,000 were recovered. The accused were charged under Section 43(a), unauthorized access involved to carry transactions.

13. Bomb Hoax Mail In an email hoax, sent by a 15-year-old boy from Bangalore, the Cyber Crime Investigation Cell (CCIC) arrested him in 2009. The boy was accused of sending an email to a private news company saying, “I have planted 5 bombs in Mumbai, you have two hours to find them”. The concerned authorities were contacted immediately, in relation to the cyber case in India, who traced the IP address (Internet Protocol) to Bangalore.

14. A Look-alike Website A 9-person crime, was registered under Sections 65, 66, 66A, C and D of the Information Technology Act, along with Sections 419 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code. Under the complaint of this cyber fraud case in India, a company representative in the business of trading and distribution of petrochemicals in India and abroad had filed the report against the 9 accused of using a similar looking website to carry on the trade. The accused ran a defamation campaign against the company, causing them crores of rupees of loss from their customers, suppliers and even producers.

15. Cyber Terrorism Since the changes were carried out in the Information Technology Act in Mumbai, this case of cyber terrorism was its first project. A threat email had been delivered to the BSE and NSE, at 10:44 am on Monday. With the MRA Marg police and the Cyber Crime Investigation Cell (CCIC) working together on the cyber crime case, the accused has been detained. The IP address had been traced to Patna, Bihar. When checked for any personal details, two contact numbers were found, which belonged to a photo frame maker in Patna.

Personal Cases

• Cyber Police has arrested a Husband for misusing his wife’s FB account, in a cyber case in India. He hired an ethical hacker to hack into his wife’s FB account so that he can find pieces of evidence regarding her bad character.
• Using the trojan or malware, a woman’s webcam was accessed to capture her private videos and posted on an illegal website. The incident came into light when the Mumbai resident appeared for an interview.
• The cyber fraud case of duplication of a SIM card was registered with the police when a businessman from Ahmedabad caught wind of it. He registered a complaint under the cyber and financial crime since the defrauders had submitted fake documents with the mobile company to gain the businessman’s personal details.
• In a social media related cybercrime complaint, a famous Gujarati singer claimed that her photos were being used by an unknown man, saying they were married and had a child together.
• To gain personal revenge, an ex-boyfriend, working as a software engineer, posted his ex’s personal phone number on a 24*7 dating service helpline, was arrested in a leading cybercrime case.

World-first “Cybercrime Index” ranks countries by cybercrime threat level

Following three years of intensive research, an international team of researchers have compiled the first ever ‘World Cybercrime Index’, which identifies the globe’s key cybercrime hotspots by ranking the most significant sources of cybercrime at a national level.

The Index, published today in the journal PLOS ONE , shows that a relatively small number of countries house the greatest cybercriminal threat. Russia tops the list, followed by Ukraine, China, the USA, Nigeria, and Romania. The UK comes in at number eight.

‘The research that underpins the Index will help remove the veil of anonymity around cybercriminal offenders, and we hope that it will aid the fight against the growing threat of profit-driven cybercrime,’ Dr Bruce said.

‘We now have a deeper understanding of the geography of cybercrime, and how different countries specialise in different types of cybercrime.’

‘By continuing to collect this data, we’ll be able to monitor the emergence of any new hotspots and it is possible early interventions could be made in at-risk countries before a serious cybercrime problem even develops.’

The data that underpins the Index was gathered through a survey of 92 leading cybercrime experts from around the world who are involved in cybercrime intelligence gathering and investigations. The survey asked the experts to consider five major categories of cybercrime*, nominate the countries that they consider to be the most significant sources of each of these types of cybercrime, and then rank each country according to the impact, professionalism, and technical skill of its cybercriminals.

Co-author Associate Professor Jonathan Lusthaus , from the University of Oxford’s Department of Sociology and Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, said cybercrime has largely been an invisible phenomenon because offenders often mask their physical locations by hiding behind fake profiles and technical protections.

'Due to the illicit and anonymous nature of their activities, cybercriminals cannot be easily accessed or reliably surveyed. They are actively hiding. If you try to use technical data to map their location, you will also fail, as cybercriminals bounce their attacks around internet infrastructure across the world. The best means we have to draw a picture of where these offenders are actually located is to survey those whose job it is to track these people,' Dr Lusthaus said.

Figuring out why some countries are cybercrime hotspots, and others aren't, is the next stage of the research. There are existing theories about why some countries have become hubs of cybercriminal activity - for example, that a technically skilled workforce with few employment opportunities may turn to illicit activity to make ends meet - which we'll be able to test against our global data set. Dr Miranda Bruce  Department of Sociology, University of Oxford and UNSW Canberra   

Co-author of the study, Professor Federico Varese from Sciences Po in France, said the World Cybercrime Index is the first step in a broader aim to understand the local dimensions of cybercrime production across the world.

‘We are hoping to expand the study so that we can determine whether national characteristics like educational attainment, internet penetration, GDP, or levels of corruption are associated with cybercrime. Many people think that cybercrime is global and fluid, but this study supports the view that, much like forms of organised crime, it is embedded within particular contexts,’ Professor Varese said.

The World Cybercrime Index has been developed as a joint partnership between the University of Oxford and UNSW and has also been funded by CRIMGOV , a European Union-supported project based at the University of Oxford and Sciences Po. The other co-authors of the study include Professor Ridhi Kashyap from the University of Oxford and Professor Nigel Phair from Monash University.

The study ‘Mapping the global geography of cybercrime with the World Cybercrime Index’ has been published in the journal PLOS ONE .

*The five major categories of cybercrime assessed by the study were:

1.   Technical products/services (e.g. malware coding, botnet access, access to compromised systems, tool production).

2.   Attacks and extortion (e.g. denial-of-service attacks, ransomware).

3.   Data/identity theft (e.g. hacking, phishing, account compromises, credit card comprises).

4.   Scams (e.g. advance fee fraud, business email compromise, online auction fraud).

5.   Cashing out/money laundering (e.g. credit card fraud, money mules, illicit virtual currency platforms).

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Top 5 Cyber Forensics Case Studies in India

• February 16, 2021

Cyber forensic or computer forensic is important to find out of the cybercriminal. It plays a major role nowadays. As compare with normal forensics we cannot find any blood splatters, cloths, hairs, etc in cyber forensic cases. In cyber forensics we need to examine the computer or related things and identify the evidence from it. So, I am taking you to the 5 cyber forensic case studies.

Case no:1 Hosting Obscene Profiles (Tamil Nadu)

Here I am starting with a case which happened in Tamil Nadu. The case is about the hosting obscene profiles. This case has solved by the investigation team in Tamil Nadu. The complainant was a girl and the suspect was her college mate. In this case the suspect will create some fake profile of the complainant and put in some dating website. He did this as a revenge for not accepting his marriage proposal. So this is the background of the case.

Investigation Process

Let’s get into the investigation process. As per the complaint of the girls the investigators started investigation and analyze the webpage where her profile and details. And they log in to that fake profile by determining its credentials, and they find out from where these profiles were created by using access log. They identified 2 IP addresses, and also identified the ISP. From that ISP detail they determine that those details are uploaded from a café. So the investigators went to that café and from the register and determine suspect name. Then he got arrested and examining his SIM the investigators found number of the complainant.

The suspect was convicted of the crime, and he sentenced to two years of imprisonment as well as fine.

Case no:2 Illegal money transfer (Maharashtra)

The second case is about an illegal money transfer. This case is happened in Maharashtra. The accused in this case is a person who is worked in a BPO. He is handling the business of a multinational bank. So, he had used some confidential information of the banks customers and transferred huge sum of money from the accounts.

Let’s see the investigation process of the case. As per the complaint received from the frim they analysed and studied the systems of the firm to determine the source of data theft. During the investigation the system server logs of BPO were collected, and they find that the illegal transfer were made by tracing the IP address to the internet service provider and it is ultimately through cyber café and they also found that they made illegal transfer by using swift codes. Almost has been  The registers made in cyber café assisted in identifying the accused in the case. Almost 17 accused were arrested.

Trail for this case is not completed, its pending trial in the court.

Case no:3 Creating Fake Profile (Andhra Pradesh)

The next case is of creating fake profile. This case is happened in Andhra Pradesh. The complainant received obscene email from unknown email IDs. The suspect also noticed that obscene profiles and pictures are posted in matrimonial sites.

The investigators collect the original email of the suspect and determine its IP address. From the IP address he could confirm the internet service provider, and its leads the investigating officer to the accused house. Then they search the accused house and seized a desktop computer and a handicam. By analysing and examining the desktop computer and handicam they find the obscene email and they find an identical copy of the uploaded photos from the handicam. The accused was the divorced husband of the suspect.

Based on the evidence collected from the handicam and desktop computer charge sheet has been filed against accused and case is currently pending trial.

Case no:4 Intellectual property theft (Karnataka)

 Let see an intellectual property theft happened in software based company situated in Bangalore. The complainant complains that some of the company’s employs had used the company’s IT system and destoryed with the source code of the software under development.

As per the complaint received from the company the investigating team visit the company and scanned the logs of email. They found the IP address and using tracing software trace out the ISP and the address of the place where the email has been sent. This information leads the investigation to the Hyderabad based company. The investigation team went to that company and found 13 computers and a server, using specialized tools the disk were imaged and analysed by the team. The analysis revealed that the original source code and its tampered version had been stored from the system.

Based on the collected evidence the investigation has completed and arrested the accused. Case is in its final stage waiting for the opinion report from C-DAC.

Case no:5 Hacking (Karnataka)

Here is the fifth case which is a hacking case it happened in Bangalore Karnataka. In this case the complainant receives the obscene pornographic material at her email address and mobile phone. She also stated that she had a doubt somebody has hacked her accounts.

The investigating team analyse the mail received by the suspect, and they sent message to different email using complainant email address. Subsequently the investigating team was able to identify the ISP address of the computer system and it was also tracked on an organisation in Delhi from its server logs, through this log they get to know about the system from which the obscene material was sent. Using disk imaging and analysing tool the email were retrieved from the system.

Conclusion:

On the basis of the collected evidence the accused was arrested. The case has been finalised and currently pending administrative approval.

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A Study on Cyber Crime and its Legal Framework in India

• Apoorva Bhangla and Jahanvi Tuli
• Show Author Details

Apoorva Bhangla

Student at NMIMS School of Law, India

Jahanvi Tuli

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Cyber-crime mainly involves activities that use internet and computers as a tool to extract private information of an individual either directly or indirectly and disclosing it on online platforms without the person’s consent or illegally with the aim of degrading the reputation or causing mental or physical harm. With the advancement in technology a steep increase in the rate of cyber-crimes has been observed. With the increase of dependency on cyberspace internet crimes committed against women have also increased. This is mainly because around more than half of the online users are not fully aware of the functioning of online platforms, they are ignorant towards technological advancements and have minimal adequate training and education. Thus, cybercrime has emerged as a major challenge for the law enforcement agencies of different countries in order to protect women and children who are harassed and abused for voyeuristic pleasures. Women are commonly targeted for cyber stalking, cyber pornography, impersonation etc. India is one of the few countries which has enacted the IT Act 2000 to deal with issues pertaining to cyber-crimes in order to protect the women from exploitation by vicious predators however this act doesn’t address some of the gravest dangers to the security of the women and issues involving women are still growing immensely.

• Cyber-crime
• online platforms.

Research Paper

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International Journal of Law Management and Humanities, Volume 4, Issue 2, Page 493 - 504

Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution -NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits remixing, adapting, and building upon the work for non-commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright © IJLMH 2021

I. Introduction

The advent of technology has provided women an opportunity to explore their strengths and widen their capabilities. With the rapid modernisation taking place all over the world, internet has become a part of our daily lives. It has proved to be an efficient tool of communication. However, with the increase of dependency on cyberspace internet crimes committed against women have also increased. Women all over the world have been victims to a number of harassments for decades now. With the advent of technology and digitalisation people have the ability to communicate virtually with anybody, anytime and anywhere across the globe. Cyber-crime has emerged as one of the results of this modernisation. Online platforms are often used to harass and abuse women for voyeuristic pleasures. One of the major reasons as to why it takes place is because of the fact that around more than half of the online users are not fully aware of the functioning of online platforms such as WhatsApp, skype, Facebook, etc. There is minimal adequate training and education that is provided to the users. Moreover, ignorance towards technological advancements has carved its way for such heinous crimes. Women are commonly targeted for cyber stalking, cyber pornography, impersonation etc. The victims often trust the offender and share their private data or information as a consequence of which innumerable cyber-crimes take place daily. Due to fear of defamation in the society and lack of evidence it becomes really difficult to identify the origin of the crime. Cyber-crime has become a concept wherein majority of cases the victims have been women who have fallen prey to technological fancies. A steep increase in the rate of cyber-crimes has been observed in different countries where the primary concern has always been the protection of women. India is one of the few countries which has enacted the IT Act 2000 to deal with issues pertaining to cyber-crimes in order to protect the women from exploitation by vicious predators and provide them support so that they can fight back against all wrongdoings. Many institutions have taken up the issues pertaining to cybercrime in order to raise awareness for the safety of women but still a steep increase has been observed in this area, which poses a negative impact on the development of the nation. 

II. What is Cyber Crime?

Cybercrimes can be defined as: “Offences that are committed against individuals or groups of individuals with a criminal motive to intentionally harm the reputation of the victim or cause physical or mental harm, or loss, to the victim directly or indirectly, using modern telecommunication networks such as Internet (networks including chat rooms, emails, notice boards and groups) and mobile phones”. [1]

Cyber-crime involves the use of internet and computer. It threatens an individual’s privacy by disclosing or publishing their personal or confidential information online with the aim of degrading their reputation and causing them physical or mental harm either directly or indirectly. Women are generally the targets of these offenders because they are inexperienced and lack knowledge of the cyber world, thereby falling prey to the technological fancies.

Debarati Halder and K. Jaishankar further define cybercrime from the perspective of gender and defined “cybercrime against women” as “Crimes targeted against women with a motive to intentionally harm the victim psychologically and physically, using modern telecommunication networks such as internet and mobile phones”.

Types of Cyber Crime

• Cyberstalking

In today’s modern world, it is one of the most commonly committed crimes. It involves following a person’s movements and pursuing him/her stealthily. It involves gathering data that maybe used to harass a person or making false accusations or threats. A cyber stalker uses internet to stalk someone and thus, doesn’t pose a direct physical threat to an individual but due to the anonymity of the interactions that take place online the chances of identification of the cyber stalker becomes quite difficult which makes this crime more common than physical stalking. 

One of the major targets of cyber stalking is women and children who are stalked by men and adult predators namely, for revenge, for sexual harassment and for ego. Most of the times, the victim is unaware of the use and rules of the internet and the anonymity of the users has contributed to the rise of cyber stalking as a form of crime. The offender  for committing this offence maybe charged for breach of confidentiality and privacy under section 72 of the IT Act, 2000 as cyber stalking is yet not covered under existing cyber laws in India. Also, section 441 and 509 of IPC are also applicable for the same.

• Cyber Pornography

It is a major threat to women and children security as it involves publishing and transmitting pornographic pictures, photos or writings using the internet which can be reproduced on various other electronic devices instantly. It refers to portrayal of sexual material on the internet.

According to A.P. Mali, “It is the graphic, sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures or words that also includes pornography is verbal or pictorial material which represents or describes sexual behaviour that is degrading or abusive to one or more of participants in such a way as to endorse the degradation. The person has chosen or consented to be harmed, abused, subjected to coercion does not alter the degrading character of such behaviour.” [2] Around 50% of the total websites on the internet show pornographic material wherein photos and pictures of women are posted online that are dangerous to women’s integrity. 

According to IT Amendment Act 2008 “crime of pornography under section 67-A, whoever publishes and transmits or causes to be a published and transmitted in the electronic form any material which contains sexually explicit act or conduct can be called as pornography. Section 292/293/294, 500/506 and 509 of Indian Panel Code, 1860 are also applicable and victim can file a complaint near the Police Station where the crime has been committed or where he comes to know about crime. After proving crime, the accused can be called as first conviction with an imprisonment for a term which may extend to five years including fine which may extend to ten lakh rupees. In the second conviction the term of imprisonment may extend to seven years and fine may extend to ten lakh rupees”.

• Cyber Morphing

It is a form of crime in which the original picture is edited by an unauthorised user or a person possessing a fake identity. Photographs are taken of female users from their profiles and are then reposted for pornographic purposes by fake accounts on different sites after editing them. Due to the lack of awareness among the users the criminals are encouraged to commit such heinous crimes. Cyber morphing or Cyber obscenity is punishable under section 43 and 66 of Information Act 2000.

• Cyber Bullying

Cyberbullying involves the use of internet for causing embarrassment or humiliation to someone place by sharing their personal or private data by sending, posting or sharing harmful or false content over digital devices like computers, tablets, laptops and cell phones. It can take place through SMS, online gaming communities, online forums or social media platforms wherein information can be exchanged online and is available to a number of people. Cyberbullying is persistent and permanent and therefore, can harm the online reputation of not just the victim but both the parties involved. 

• Email Spoofing and Impersonation

It is one of the most common cybercrime. It involves sending e-mail which represents its origin. In today’s times, this from of crime has become immensely common that it becomes really difficult to assess as to whether the mail that is received is truly from the original sender. Email spoofing is mostly used to extract personal information and private images from women fraudulently and are later used to blackmail them. According to a report, there has been a 280% of increase of phishing attacks since 2016. Avanan research depicts that around 4% of the total emails that are received by an individual user are fraudulent emails. In Gujarat Ambuja’s Executive case, the 51 year old cyber 1 criminal created a fake email ID and pretending to be a woman indulged in a “cyber relationship” extorting Rs 96 lakh from an Abu Dhabi based businessman. [3]

Email spoofing is an offence under section 66-D of the Information Technology Amendment Act, 2008 and section 417, 419 and 465 of Indian Panel Code 1860. It is a cognizable, bailable and compoundable offence with permission of the court before which the prosecution of such offence is pending and triable by any magistrate.

• Online Trolling

It is a form of online violence on social media platforms where people are given the liberty to speak their mind. Online harassers often tend to target people who express their opinions and think differently from the prevailing societal norms. On such section constitutes of females who are targeted by social media bullies. According to Digital Hifazat report, “women that are vocal online, especially on topics that have been traditionally relegated to ‘male expertise’ like religion or politics, or about women’s experiences, including those of sexuality, menstruation, or speaking out about patriarchy, are subjected to a vicious form of trolling, usually from self-identified right-wing accounts on Twitter.” [4]

Social media bullying takes a toll on the mental as well as the physical health of the victims. Abuse, hate speech and mean comments are the most common elements of trolling. The most common consequences of trolling are self-censorship and mental health concerns. 

III. Extent of cybercrime against women in india

With approximately 688 million active users, India is the second largest internet market in the world. [5] Sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and Snapchat are the most liked in India. While internet population has been increasing there still is a gender divide. According to a report published by IAMAI (Internet and Mobile Association of India) on internet usage in India, about 67% of the users are male compared to which only 33% are female. [6] This disparity between the male and female users is the major reason for the growth of cybercrime incidents against women.

Cyber-crimes are illegal activities which is forbidden by the law and committed by the use of internet and cyber technology. Cyber-crimes can be committed against any person, property or government but this paper solely focuses on cyber- crimes against women. According to National Crime Research Bureau there was sharp increase in the number of reported cyber-crime in 2017 in comparison to past years. Further increase in the reported cybercrimes can be seen in the year 2018. “While a total of 21,796 crimes were recorded under both IPC and IT Act in 2017, the number has increased to 27,248 in 2018.” [7] In 2017 NCRB for the first time had included categories relating to women and child on the nature of crimes committed against them.

Since the 1990s the information technology has taken giant strides forward and every family who has a modest income has the internet service. Individuals from varying age are able to use it everywhere starting from their home to their workplace. It can be deduced that internet has become a world on its own with its own place where one can share, have cultural values or opportunities.  But it has its own disadvantages, the cyber world has become a place for wrongdoers to defraud women and some even going as low as to encroach children. The ceaseless advancement of internet is making it harder to detect and regulate leading to rise of cyber criminals. Due to technological innovations cyber criminals are able to commit crime with a fake identity from any place in the world. This means that they do not have any physical contact with the real world and are mostly getting away with it without any punishment. With the protection of anonymity people are able to access any kind of material on the web which leads to huge number of anti-social, violent and aggressive content.

One of the major reason for the rise of cyber-crime against women apart from the advancement of internet is the fact that Indian women are not open on reporting a cyber-crime. They fear that it will bring disgrace to their families. Most of the times they believe that it is their own fault that the crime happened. Cyber space is a world on its own and people come and go as they please. This makes the cyber criminals to commit a crime and escape punishment easily. Through various instances it can be seen that women befriend men on the internet who forms a bond by discussing their lives and pretending to be the woman’s true friend. Gradually they form a strong friendship and then starts to send obscene messages. In this tinstance it is the duty of the woman to report the person but it can be seen that in the most of the cases they shy away and this gives more courage to the cyber-criminal. A 2016 survey on Violence Online in India conducted by the Feminism in India portal on 500 individuals (97% women and 3% trans-genders) found that 58 percent of respondents “had faced some kind of online aggression in the form of trolling, bullying, abuse or harassment”. But 38% of those who faced such violence did not take any action. [8] The victim women needs to understand that by reporting the man the problem can be solved and further saving the lives of other woman who can be the criminal’s future targets.

IV. The legal framework

There are two unique features of the Internet. Firstly, it is not confined to a particular boundary and the cyber-criminal can commit a crime from ay part of the world. The second unique feature is that it provide anonymity to its users which has its own boon and bane. For people who use this anonymity for putting out their opinion to the world it’s a boon but the perpetrators who use this anonymity for commission of crime it is a bane. Therefore this features not only pose a challenge in crime prevention but also in the implementation of law. At present there is no specific law that deals with cyber-crime against women. Other laws which can be used in the specific case, most women are not aware of. Women does not know about their rights or that such rights exist.

There are many laws in statues and regulations which penalises cyber-crime. But the majority of the laws belong to the Indian penal Code (IPC), 1860 and the Information technology Act (IT Act), 2000. The IPC is the general criminal code of India which defines offences and prescribes punishment for the same. IPC covers laws and punishment pertaining to physical world and has been legislatively amended and judiciously interpreted to be applicable to cyber criminals. Whereas the IT Act is a specific code pertaining to use of information technology and crime committed through it. In 2008 IT Amendment Act was enacted inclusive of certain crimes related to cyber world. Both IT Act and IPC are complementary to each other on cyber-crime against women. The below mentioned table is taken from a discussion paper published by IT for Change it showcases the laws that a cyber-criminal can be charged with when he/she commits a crime against women. Following which the loopholes in the said laws is analysed.

Table 1. Key legal provisions that can be invoked to address online Violence against women [9]

Lacuna in the Existing Provision of Law

• The verbal abuse made online which does not contain any sexual content is not properly tackled. General sexist comments have not been taken under Section 499 and Section 507 of the IPC which deals with criminal defamation and criminal intimidation pertaining to those trolls that are of personal nature. Further, doxing without any circulation of sexual material and without any intimidation is not included. Section 66 of the IT Act criminalises hacking but it does not explicitly state the act of doxing through hacking. Online trolling, verbal abuse, hacking for doxing has been treated as personal and isolated crime in Section 499 and Section 507 of IPC and Section 66 of the IT Act. It is important to note that this act of abuse is committed against women because she is a women. From the past it can be seen that the abuse is based on the women’s sexuality and caste.
• Section 66E of IT Act and Section 354C, Section 354D of the Criminal Laws Amendment Act 2013 are the exception to violence as physical harm and not as intrusion to bodily integrity and personal autonomy as defined by the other sections of IT Act and IPC. These sections also just focuses on physical privacy and not on the “informational privacy”. [10] It is to be considered that Section 509 of IPC mention “Privacy” but it only talks about privacy with respect to women’s modesty. “Sexual violence is largely viewed from the standpoint of maintaining public decency through curbing obscenity and protecting the modesty of women.” [11] Further, it can be seen that withdrawn at any point. Sexual violence is combined with the need to regulate the ratification and representation of sexuality which results in reinforcing genders norms of protecting women’s sexuality rather than protecting her bodily integrity or their informational privacy. Section 72 [12] and Section 43 read with Section 66 [13] of the IT Act is an economic offence and not a gender or social offence.
• Psychological violence based on gender against women is not recognised by the law outside their familial setting. Acknowledgement of psychological violence that is the circulation of private information through infringement of privacy which is not of sexual nature is not been done.
• Additionally laws like Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 which deals with cases related to psychological violence at home and live in relationships does not talk about cybercrime with respect to women.

V. Suggestions

• While using online platform not divulging any personal data is almost impossible and thus, one should beware while sharing any personal information online.
• It is imperative that an eye should be kept on phony email messages and such emails should not be responded to that ask for personal information. Also, email address should be guarded.
• While engaging in online activities it is imperative that attention should be paid to privacy policies on websites and steer clear of fraudulent websites used to steal personal information.
• It is necessary that response to offences on the internet against women should be seen as part of the broader movement against harassment and abuse. Broader efforts should be initiated as it is ultimately a people- centred challenge.
• Keeping up with the pace of change is the need of the hour. Keeping up with the technological advancements is a challenge that is essential to overcome as most of the online crimes takes place due to the lack of knowledge and awareness among the users.
• A collaborative effort among media, clubs, associations and women’s media networks is critical to promote women’s leadership and decision making in the society.
• Online diligence, monitoring and reporting against violence and cyber-crime should be done effectively and efficiently.
• There should be an E-portal where women can report their problems online themselves without suffering from the stigma of involving police in such matters. Also, the database of criminals should be maintained which could help in law enforcement.
• Women should be made aware about using online media platforms and adequate procedures should be followed by them. They need to be aware of their right in the cyberspace.
• Education systems must initiate contemporary issues regarding online crimes and awareness should be spread regarding safe internet uses.
• The government should make more rigid rules to apply on the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as they have the entire record of the data that is accuses by the users surfing on the web. Also, in case of any suspicious activities a report should be made by them in order to prevent crimes at an early stage.

VI. Conclusion

“The law is not the be-all and end-all solution.” Victims are still not getting justice despite of a strong legal base in spite of them remaining silent. Cyber-crime against women is just a reality check of what really is going on in the real world. The lines between the online and offline world is getting blurred. Cyber-crime happens because the criminals think that is a much easier way with less punishment. With millions of users in the online platforms complaint mechanisms has also become fruitless.

For instance in the recent boy’s locker room case where group of teenage boys from Delhi shared pictures of underage women and objectified them by passing derogatory comments on group chat in Instagram and Snapchat. When a girl shared the screenshots of the chats the group was busted. Women all over country raised voices but it could be seen that they were not shocked. The reason is that objectification of women has become quite normal in the society. Women have has accepted this mentality of objectification by male as every day new cases come into light. Years have passed and still women lives in the fear of going out alone outside in the real world. In fact the online world which she could go to in the safety of her home has also become an unsafe place.

It comes upon the women to take preventive measures such as usage of data security, not leaving digital footprint, keeping everything password protected. But this are all superficial ways. The major problem that has always been existing is the patriarchy and misogyny in the society. To solve this problem a long term measure need to be undertaken that will help in dealing with cyber-crime against women.

There is the need of the hour to evolve the societal and cultural norms with the development of information technology. Mandatory steps need to be taken. Steps like digital literacy, development of data security, providing access of technology to women and girls and most of all enactment of laws specifically on cyber-crime especially with reference to women.

[1] DEBRATI HALDER &   K. JAISHANKAR,   CYBER CRIMES AGAINST WOMEN IN INDIA

[2] Adv. Prashant Mali, IT Act 2000: Types of Cyber Crimes & Cyber Law in India-Part 1 .

[3] Case of Cyber Extortion , INDIA FORENSIC, (Jan 20, 2021), http://www.indiaforensic.com/cyberextortion.htm

[4] Trolls Target Women: Dealing with Online Violence, THE CITIZEN, (Jan 21, 2021), https://www.thecitizen.in/ index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/7/17330/Trolls-Target-Women-Dealing-with-Online-Violence

[5] Digital population in India as of January 2020 , STATISTA, (Jan 21, 2021),   www.statista.com/statistics/309866/ india-digital-population/.

[6] India Internet 2019 , IAMAI, (Jan 28, 2021), https://cms.iamai.in/Content/ResearchPapers/d3654bcc-002f-4fc7-ab39-e1fbeb00005d.pdf

[7] Crime in India- 2018 , NCRB, (Jan 28, 2021), https://ncrb.gov.in/crime-india-2018

[8] Pasricha & Japleen, “Violence” online in India: Cybercrimes against women and minorities on social media , http://feminisminindia.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/FII_cyberbullying_report_website.pdf

[9] Technology-mediated violence against women in India, IT FOR CHANGE, (Jan 29, 2021), https://itforchange.net/e-vaw/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/DISCUSSIONPAPER.pdf

[10] “Information privacy, or data privacy (or data protection), concerns personally identifiable information or other sensitive information and how it is collected, stored, used, and finally destroyed or deleted – in digital form or otherwise. In relation to technology, it pertains to the relationship between collection and dissemination of data, technology, the public expectation of privacy, and the legal and political issues surrounding them.”

[11] supra note 9

[12] Breach of privacy and confidentiality

[13] Data Theft

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5 Biggest Cyber Attacks in India

Cyber Threat Report of 2019: 69% of Firms Face Serious Cyber Attacks in India!

Do you know that India is in has been ranked second  position among st the countries affected by cyber-attacks between  2016-2018? According to a source , there was a 22% rise in cyber attacks in India on IoT deployments. India has faced the most number of attacks in the IoT department this year. In fact, India has been consecutively facing cyber-attacks, for the second time in a row! 

In a recent study, it was revealed that out of 15 Indian cities, Mumbai, New Delhi, and Bengaluru have faced the maximum number of cyber attacks. In the Annual Cyber Security Report by CISCO, 53% of cyber attacks caused more than $500K of financial loss to organizations in 2018. 

India has faced a rise of 7.9% in data breaches since 2017. Also, the average cost per data breach record is mounting to INR 4,552 ($64). Cyber attacks in India have risen up to such an extent that our country ranks fourth out of the top 10 targeted countries in the world. In a report by India Today , Chennai experienced the highest percentile of cyber attacks with a stat of 48% in the first quarter of 2019.

No survey or warning has brought any change in the cyber security policies of companies across the nation. In spite of witnessing several cyber attacks in India, people are still not aware of lucrative cyber security solutions to prevent their organization from any other attack. Here are some recent series of cyber attacks that massively brought loss to renowned companies in India. 

Table of Content

• 1.1 Cosmos Bank Cyber Attack in Pune 
• 1.2 ATM System Hacked 
• 1.3 UIDAI Aadhaar Software Hacked
• 1.4 Hack Attack on Indian Healthcare Websites 
• 1.5 SIM Swap Scam 
• 2.1 About The Author

The 2019’s Biggest Cyber Attacks  in India

Cybercriminals have adapted advanced cyber attack techniques for their targeted end-users. Various business sectors and geographical locations have faced recent cyber attacks in India. 

Cosmos Bank Cyber Attack in Pune 

A recent cyber attack in India in 2018 was deployed on Cosmos Bank in Pune. This daring attack shook the whole banking sector of India when hackers siphoned off Rs. 94.42 crores from Cosmos Cooperative Bank Ltd. in Pune.

Hackers hacked into the bank’s ATM server and took details of many visas and rupee debit cardholders. Money was wiped off while hacker gangs from around 28 countries immediately withdrew the amount as soon as they were informed. 

ATM System Hacked 

Around mid-2018, Canara bank ATM servers were targeted in a cyber attack. Almost 20 lakh rupees were wiped off from various bank accounts. A count of 50 victims was estimated and according to the sources, cyber attackers held ATM details of more than 300 users. Hackers used skimming devices to steal information from debit cardholders. Transactions made from stolen details amounted from Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 40,000. 

UIDAI Aadhaar Software Hacked

2018 started with a massive data breach of personal records of 1.1 Billion Indian Aadhaar cardholders. UIDAI revealed that around 210 Indian Government websites had leaked the Aadhaar details of people online.

Data leaked included Aadhaar, PAN and mobile numbers, bank account numbers, IFSC codes, and mostly every personal information of all individual cardholders. If it wasn’t enough shocking, anonymous sellers were selling the Aadhaar information of any person for Rs. 500 over Whatsapp. Also, one could get any person’s Aadhaar car printout by paying an extra amount of Rs.300. 

Hack Attack on Indian Healthcare Websites 

Indian-based healthcare websites became a victim of cyber attacks recently in 2019. As stated by US-based cyber security firms, hackers broke in and invaded a leading India-based healthcare website. The hacker stole 68 lakh records of patients as well as doctors. 

SIM Swap Scam  

Two hackers from Navi Mumbai were arrested for transferring 4 crore rupees from numerous bank accounts in August 2018. They illegally transferred money from the bank accounts of many individuals. By fraudulently gaining SIM card information, both attackers blocked individuals’ SIM cards and with the help of fake document posts, they carried out transactions via online banking. They also tried to hack the accounts of various targeted companies.  

Aforesaid stats and events of the latest cyber attacks in India are a wake-up call for all those individuals and companies who are still vulnerable to cyber threats. It is very essential for organizations to implement cyber security measures and follow the below-mentioned security guidelines.

Cyber Security Measures for Organizations to Prevent Cyber Attacks

• Educate employees on emerging cyber attacks with security awareness training .
• Keep all software and systems updated from time to time with the latest security patches.
• Implement email authentication protocols such as DMARC , DKIM , and SPF to secure your email domain from email-based cyber attacks.
• Get regular Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing to patch and remove the existing vulnerabilities in the network and web application.
• Limit employee access to sensitive data or confidential information and limit their authority to install the software.
• Use highly strong passwords for accounts and make sure to update them at long intervals.
• Avoid the practice of open password sharing at work .

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Major Cyber Attacks on India (Exclusive News) (Updated)

January 20th, 2020.

Cyber Attacks on India or any other part of this world are an attempt to destroy or infect computer networks in order to extract or extort money or for other malicious intentions such as procuring necessary information. Cyber attacks alter computer code, data, or logic via malicious code resulting in troublesome consequences that can compromise the information or data of the organizations to make it available to cybercriminals. A serious threat lurking around, Cyber attacks on India Around 1.6 million attacks were reported in the year 2020. The world was moving to remote corners of the world and security was under serious threat owing to work from home. Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) has alerted over 700 organizations to be alert about cyber attacks and suggested improving their cyber security measures to keep risks at a minimum. Wish to know which are the Cyber Attacks in India? Read below

Major and Minor cyber attacks on India { Till 2021]

Sim swap fraud.

Cyber Attack on Cosmos Bank

Also Know: Cyber Security New Year’s Resolutions For 2020

On the national level, it has been done through 400 cards and the transactions involved were 2,800. This was the first malware attack in India against the switching system which broke the communication between the payment gateway and the bank. Prevention: Hardening of the security systems by limiting their functions and performance only to authorized people can be the way forward. Any unauthorized access to the network should immediately set an alarm to block all access to the bank’s network. Also, to minimize risk, enabling a two-factor authentication might help. Through testing, potential vulnerabilities can be fished out and can make the entire digital part of the banking system safe.

ATM System Hacked in Kolkata

In July 2018 fraudsters hacked into Canara bank ATM servers and wiped off almost 20 lakh rupees from different bank accounts. The number of victims was over 50 and it was believed that they were holding the account details of more than 300 ATM users across India. The hackers used skimming devices on ATMs to steal the information of debit cardholders and made a minimum transaction of INR 10,000 and a maximum of INR 40,000 per account.

Also Know: What is a DDoS attack? How to Stop DDoS Attacks?

On 5 August 2018, two men were arrested in New Delhi who were working with an international gang that uses skimming activities to extract the details of the bank account. Prevention: Enhancement of the security features in ATM and ATM monitoring systems can prevent any misuse of data. Another way to prevent fraudulent activity is to minimize the risk of skimming by using lockbox services to receive and transfer money safely. This uses an encrypted code that is safer than any other payment. Websites Hacked: Over 22,000 websites were hacked between the months of April 2017 and January 2018. As per the information presented by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, over 493 websites were affected by malware propagation including 114 websites run by the government. The attacks were intended to gather information about the services and details of the users in their network. Prevention: Using a more secure firewall for networks and servers which can block any unauthorized access from outside the network is perhaps the best idea. Personal information of individuals is critical for users and cannot be allowed to be taped into by criminals. Thus, monitoring and introducing a proper network including a firewall and security system may help in minimizing the risk of getting hacked.

Phishing Attack on Wipro

• Always think before you click. Phishing links can impersonate as authentic links with some minor changes that might not be visible at a single glance. Make sure that you have read the complete link before clicking it
• Install measures that can effectively prevent such attacks
• Make sure that the websites you are accessing are secure. Usually, a secure website will have a security certificate to safeguard all the customer information. Make sure that that website begins with HTTPS and has a lock symbol on the extreme left of the address bar.
• Check your online account on a regular basis and make sure that there are no suspicious activities. Change the password frequently.
• Update your browsers regularly as updates often will have security patches for existing loopholes.
• Keep your personal details secret

Bib B Amitabh Bachchan ‘s Twitter Account Hacked!

• Social media is infested with third-party applications. Make sure that you are using legitimate authorized applications
• Use strong credentials and change them often
• Install proper antivirus
• Enable two-factor authentication

Exposed Health Care Data Be it any government-related data; it has to be kept in utmost secrecy. What if it’s exposed? That’s what happened lately when healthcare data of India was left exposed without enough security measures. This mistake was found out by Bob Diachenko during a regular security audit. He found out that India based IP contained a data pack that’s been left exposed without any security measures. How to Prevent Database Hacking?

• Make sure that proper web application firewall is installed
• Strengthen network security by login expiration, changing passwords,
• Make sure that the admin level of your website is not exposed with a simple password
• Change the database prefix from wp6 to something random which can’t be guessed
• Stay updated regarding the latest hacking threats

How to prevent Database Hacking?

• Make sure that a proper web application firewall is installed

Personal Data Exposed from JustDial Database

• Validate all the incoming data
• Use the essential method for authentication verification
• Monitor and manage using automated scripts
• Encrypt data

• Periodical cybersecurity posture assessment
• Educate the employees on secure network practices
• Adopt a strict BYOD (Bring your own device) policy
• Do heavy encryption on the data that needs to be protected
• Deploy a system that can monitor frequently

SIM Swap Scam  Another big cyber campaign took place in August 2018, when two Hackers from Navi Mumbai transferred 4 crore rupees from multiple bank accounts. They used the SIM Swap system, illegally gaining access to various individuals’ SIM cards and illegally stealing their bank details. They used this private information to get into their bank accounts and transfer their money to their bank account. Hackers blocked individuals’ SIM cards and transacted money through online banking. Not even the individuals tried to hack the details of some of their targeted customers. Cyberattack on Union Bank of India Another shocking cyberattack that made everyone alert was done in July 2017. The attack was on one of India’s biggest banks; the Union Bank of India. The attack was initiated when an employee opened an email attachment. This email attachment had a malware code. It allowed the hackers to get inside the bank’s system and steal the bank’s data. The email attachment forged a central bank email. The employee overlooked the details and trusted the email, which initiated a malware attack and allowed the hackers to get inside the bank’s data and steal Union Bank’s access codes for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). SWIFT is used for international transactions. The hacker used these codes and transferred  $170 million to a Union Bank account at Citigroup Inc in New York. Malware attack on Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) Authorities on October 20, 2019, confirmed that the nuclear power station in Kudankulam faced a cyber attack.  The attack was initiated by the North Korean hacker group- Lazarus. This attack was done to get information on thorium-based reactors, an alternative to uranium. Initially, National Power Corporation of India (NPCI) denied the hacking attack news but later they accepted that the hackers had hacked one of their systems. They used a malware named ‘Dtrack’ to get inside the company’s system through a couple of loopholes that persisted in their security systems.  Indian journalists, activists spied on by Israeli spyware Pegasus 2019 saw another big cyber attack when Israeli spyware Pegasus was used to spy on academicians, lawyers, activists, and journalists in India. WhatsApp confirmed that NSO Group used Israeli spyware, called Pegasus to get access to the passwords, text messages on messaging apps like WhatsApp.  Pegasus took advantage of loopholes in the servers. It allowed the government spies to hack the details of about 1,400 users. Pegasus allowed to hack and get access to everything on the phones of the user (victims) remotely. Even, WhatsApp announced renovating its security features. Facebook database leak data of 419 million users Another very prominent attack was on Facebook and Twitter user data. The personal information of around 419 million users was broken to third parties. The Insecure database allowed the hackers to access the phone numbers, user’s name, gender, and location of around 419 million users that were linked to their Facebook accounts. Though the attack took place around the geographies, it also included the data of many Indian users.  Cyber-attack on Air India One of the biggest cyber-attacks India has seen in 2021 is on India’s biggest airline Air India. The Security of Indian Airlines data was compromised when the confidential information of its passengers like ticket information, passport details, and credit card information of more than 4.5 million customers was stolen by the hackers. Though the airlines tried to convince their passengers that their credit card information was safe, they insisted they change their password. LinkedIn Phishing Scam Another big attack of 2021 was a phishing scam attack on the social networking site LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one of the biggest social networks where people connect with people of their related job profiles. This networking site accounts for 756 million members across 200 countries worldwide. The company was perturbed when the data of 500 million LinkedIn users were under a security breach. The data of these account holders were sold online. The attackers had sent these users fake job offering mail which forced them to click the link and instilling malicious software on their systems. Attacks on India’s CoWIN app Amidst the pandemic, CoWIN app emerged as a ray of light for the people of India, by helping them and streamlining the complete vaccination process of the huge country. But this app appeared to be an enticing bait to hackers to lure their victims. Hackers used the CoWin app to misguided users into downloading fake apps. In January many incidents came up in light of fake Aarogya Setu apps created by hackers. It was used to implant malware into end user’s systems. The fake CoWIN app lured many users to download this fake app in an urge to get vaccinated. Security Testing and its Significance Hackers and criminals are getting smarter every day. The countermeasure is to predict their attack and block it in the most effective way possible before any unfortunate events. In Testing, mostly 4 major types of testing ate performed

• Network security
• System software security
• Client-side application security
• Server-side application security

For these tests to happen in the most efficient way possible it’s better to have a dedicated testing wing along with software development or hire services from an agency.  Stopping cyberattacks on India to a full extent might not be possible. But measures can be taken to avoid imminent ones and save a lot of money.

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Cyber Crime Against Property in India

• Cyber Law Subject-wise Law Notes
• April 22, 2024

Cyber crime against property has become a significant concern in India with the rapid digitisation of various sectors. From individuals to large corporations, everyone is vulnerable to cyber threats that can lead to financial loss, data theft and reputational damage. In this article, we will discuss the various forms of cybercrime against property in India, the legal framework in place to address such crimes and the measures individuals and organisations can take to protect themselves.

What is Cyber Crime Against Property?

Cyber crime against property are the crimes where the internet, computers or other digital technologies are used to illegally deprive someone of their property or interfere with their property rights.

Forms of Cybercrime Against Property

Intellectual property crimes.

Intellectual property encompasses a set of rights and any illegal action that fully or partially deprives the owner of these rights is an offence. Common violations include software piracy, copyright infringement, trademark infringement, patent violations, design infringements and service mark violations.

Cyber Squatting

Cybersquatting occurs when two individuals claim the same domain name. This can happen when one party registers the name first or claims the right to it based on prior use. For example, two similar names like www.yahoo.com and www.yaahoo.com.

Cyber Vandalism

Vandalism involves intentionally destroying or damaging another person’s property. Cyber vandalism refers to destroying or damaging data when a network service is disrupted or stopped. It can also include physical harm to a computer, its components or peripherals.

Hacking Computer Systems

Hacktivism involves unauthorised access or control over a computer system. Famous examples include attacks on Twitter and blogging platforms. Such attacks can result in data loss and damage to computers. Research suggests that these attacks are often not motivated by financial gain but by a desire to tarnish a person or company’s reputation.

Transmitting Viruses

Viruses are programs that attach themselves to files or computers and spread to other files or computers on a network. They typically alter or delete data on the affected computer. Worm attacks are particularly effective at compromising individuals’ computer systems.

Cyber Trespass

Cyber trespass involves accessing someone’s computer without authorisation. This access does not involve disturbing, altering, misusing or damaging data or systems. It can occur through unauthorised wireless internet connections.

Internet Time Thefts

Internet time theft falls under hacking. It involves the unauthorised use of internet hours paid for by another person. The perpetrator gains access to someone else’s ISP user ID and password, either through hacking or illegal means and uses it to access the internet without the owner’s knowledge. Signs of time theft include frequent recharging of internet time despite infrequent usage.

Hacking involves gaining unauthorised access to computer systems or networks. Hackers can steal sensitive information, disrupt operations or cause financial loss.

Phishing is a form of cyber fraud where attackers trick individuals into providing sensitive information such as passwords, credit card details or personal information by masquerading as a trustworthy entity.

Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts a victim’s files and demands a ransom to decrypt them. It can cause significant financial and data loss.

Identity Theft

Identity theft involves stealing someone’s personal information, such as their name, date of birth and social security number, to commit fraud or other crimes.

Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks

DoS attacks involve flooding a network or server with traffic to overwhelm it and prevent legitimate users from accessing it.

Legal Framework on Cyber Crime Against Property in India

In India, cybercrime against property is governed by the Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The IT Act provides legal recognition for electronic transactions, digital signatures and other cyber activities. It also defines various cyber offences and prescribes penalties for them.

Under the IT Act, the following cyber offences related to property are punishable:

• Unauthorised access to a computer system (Section 43)
• Hacking with intent to cause damage (Section 66)
• Identity theft (Section 66C)
• Publishing false digital signature certificates (Section 73)
• Breach of confidentiality and privacy (Section 72)

Additionally, the IPC contains provisions that can be used to prosecute cybercrime, such as:

• Sections 378 and 379 (theft)
• Sections 420 and 463 (cheating and forgery)
• Section 499 (defamation)

Measures to Prevent Cyber Crime Against Property

• Use Strong Passwords: Use complex and unique passwords for your online accounts and change them regularly.
• Enable Two-Factor Authentication: Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) for an extra layer of security.
• Install Antivirus Software: Install and regularly update antivirus software to protect against malware.
• Be Wary of Phishing Attempts : Be cautious of emails, messages or websites that ask for personal or financial information.
• Keep Software Updated: Regularly update your operating system and software to protect against known vulnerabilities.
• Use Secure Connections: Use secure connections (HTTPS) for online transactions and avoid using public Wi-Fi networks for sensitive activities.
• Backup Data Regularly: Regularly back up your data to protect against ransomware attacks.
• Educate Employees: Educate employees about cyber threats and best practices for cybersecurity.

Cybercrime against property is a growing threat in India, affecting individuals, businesses and government organisations alike. It is important for everyone to be aware of the various forms of cybercrime and take proactive measures to protect themselves. By following best practices for cybersecurity and staying informed about the latest threats, individuals and organisations can reduce the risk of falling victim to cybercrime.

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