The Hindu Business Line : Online privacy concerns on the rise

Coimbatore, Dec. 30 “The networked world is continuously challenged by security loop holes, threats and attacks. So watch out. If you are not careful, you sure will be a victim,” Mr Ankit Fadia, Independent Computer Security and Digital Intelligence Consultant, said.

Stating that cyber security has become an issue of global concern for all, be it corporates or home users, Mr Fadia, who was in the city to address a seminar on ‘Ethical Hacking’ at the Sri Shakthi Institute of Engineering and Technology cited real life instances and pointed out how privacy concerns crop up the moment one gets connected to the Net.

The user should therefore understand ways to protect himself/the system, he said.

Good vs bad

Asked what he meant by ‘ethical’ when one gains illegal access to a computer or network, Mr Fadia pointed out that the cyberspace, as yet, was a largely unpoliced territory with no ground rules, except those that one wrote. “Some break with sadistic intent, while others do so with an altruistic motive, highlighting the weakness of the defensive mechanism. The good guys are hackers and the bad ones are crackers,” he said.

He said the number of cyber crimes taking place globally had doubled and corporate espionage attacks such as email forging, sniffer attacks, input validation attacks, Denial of Service (DoS) and privacy attacks had also risen significantly.

Demonstrating with ease the art of breaking into one’s password to gain access to his system/files, he said “The moment you log on to the Internet, the system becomes vulnerable to cyber criminals. These criminals start the work by taking away the user’s computer IP address (the unique address given by the Internet Service Provider) using the netstat-n utility.”

Word of caution

While cautioning about the vulnerability, he said “this issue can be resolved by getting connected to a proxy server, and this can be done by downloading application from http://anonymizer.com or anonymizer.ru.”

“To mitigate attacks install firewall, anti virus software (which must be updated frequently), anti-spyware software, a strong password (alphanumeric) and above all, the Operating System should be updated once every fortnight,” Mr Fadia said.

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