Bhopal: Think twice before clicking on a link; hackers keeping a watch

Bhopal: Think twice before clicking on a link; hackers keeping a watch

Staff ReporterUpdated: Thursday, May 30, 2019, 03:11 AM IST
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Bhopal: With the advancement in technology, the hackers are finding new ways to target the online community. The traditional tools used by the hackers, are now being upgraded to newer versions and they are using them to attack netizens. Earlier, the hackers needed physical access to the electronic gadgets to hack them, however, the technology has made things easier for them by allowing them to remotely access the devices. In Bhopal too, there are various incidents of cybercrimes like blackmailing, ATM cloning, online financial fraud etc.

On the World Techie Day, that falls today – October 3 -, techies in the city talk about the current cyber threat that haunts the online community and some steps to protect ourselves from them.  According at National Crime Records Bureau report of 2015, the cybercrimes has doubled from 2013, and with the increasing use of technology every day, it seems like the cybercrime will increase leaps and bounds. In Madhya Pradesh, since November 2015 till August 17, a rise of almost 200 percent is seen in the number of cyber crime complaints.

While talking to Free Press, ethical hacker Ankit Khushwaha said “We have seen a surge in the number of people using mobiles, tablets and other electronic devices however, the people are not much aware of the fact that a single click on the internet, can expose their private information and details to the cyber criminals. Cyber Security Expert and ethical hacker, Mahesh Shrivastava, says that the most common medium for attack used by cyber criminals is the Remote Access Trojan (RAT) or in simple words ‘Trojan’. It is used by cyber criminals to steal sensitive information.

“A simple click is all that needed to gain access and steal sensitive information from computers, mobiles and electronic devices”, said Shrivastava. He added that, despite this a pendrive or an application can also be used to gain access to the victims’ computer. He added that with ‘keyloggers’ even the victims ATM can be hacked. The virtual keyboard feature used by the banks can also be compromised as the ‘keyloggers’ can be programmed in a way to click screenshot whenever the user clicks the mouse button.

Khushwaha adds that, with India going cashless, the problem may increase further as the cyber criminals will have more people to target. A joint study by ASSOCHAM and PwC said that an ATM hack has affected 3.2 million debit card users in October last year.  Pratik Parate, online security expert says that, some another form of attacks includes, injection, where loophole is found in an application and some malicious data will be added to it to manipulate it and get the required information from the application.

He adds that another is the ‘Denial of Service’ (DoS) attack, where a server or network resource is made unavailable to users by flooding the server with communication requests. Another is ‘URL interpretation’ where a criminal can make a web server to deliver web pages which he is not authorized to browse.

Mahesh Shrivastava

Increase in the use of technology, is putting us at a more risk of being attacked by hackers and online criminals.

Ankit Khushwaha

Netizens should think before clicking on any links. A single click can put their private information at risk.

Solutions
– An updated antivirus is a must.
– Use different ID/Password for different accounts.
– Secure the computer by activating firewall.
– Check the social media security settings.
– Always encrypt your data.
– Do not store card details on websites.
– When the website insists on saving password, always use the “never save password for this site” option.
– Never trust E-mails.

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