Rise of Cybercrimes and Digital Attacks in India [2018 – 2019]

Report: Rise of Cybercrime in India

Internet users across the globe are increasing at an alarming rate. More number of people are getting dependent on the internet every year where India stands loud on the usage of the internet.

According to reports, India crossed a benchmark of 500 million internet users in the year 2018. India already stands as the second largest online market worldwide, and this projected mark is going to grow more by 2022.

Although technological advancement and the internet has brought all related benefits to the country but has also led to a massive increase in the cybercrime. The cybercrime complaints are increasing day by day in India by breaking cyber laws and internet regulations.

On the other side, the government of India has brought different cybersecurity regulations and cybercrime act by introducing the Digital Police system.

Cyberworld crime, also known as 'the electronic crime,’ is a crime that commits with the help of a computer, networked devices, and hacking tools. There exist different types of cybercrime in India and other countries too.

It involves a wide range of malicious threats and activities such as cyber extortion of money, Identity theft, debit and credit card frauds, hacking of personal data from other computers, phishing, illegal and fake downloading, and Industrial espionage.

Out of all these, most of the cybercrime complaints in India are made on cyberbullying, money extortion, child pornography distribution, and terrorist attacks. Movie and video piracy are one of the effects of cybercrime in India where hackers or cybercriminals are not required directly.

In India, Financial Services, Technology, Media and Telecommunications are the most affected sectors by the criminal activities from hackers.

“From the year 2011 to 2016, there has been a 457% rise in Indian cybercrime incidents.”

• In 2010, a computer worm Stuxnet adversely affected 10,000 computers in India out of which 15 were located at Gujarat and Haryana electricity boards and petroleum explorer ONGC.
• India's largest container port, Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust was aggressively affected by the cyber attack from malware called Petya.
• In the year 2015, an oil and gas company in India was hacked after which; the cybercriminals duplicated many official email ids of employees to transfer a hundred crores of money into the hacker's account.
• On September 20, 2007, the Government of Maharashtra’s official website was hacked by a hacking group Hackers Cool Al-Jazeera in Washington.
• In 2018, Vodafone was also in the news when the Indian court ordered the company to pay Rs.4.5lakhs to a resident who fell victim to cybercrime in 2013. Actually, a reproduction of a victim’s SIM card was issued to another individual that caused two transactions of Rs. 4.5 lakh without his knowledge.
• In August 2018, two men were arrested by Mumbai cybercrime cell for doing SIM Swap Fraud. These fraudsters were blocking SIM Cards to carry out transactions through online banking.
• Last year, The Cosmos Bank had a destructive hit from a cyberattack, where the hackers hacked into the servers of ATM and stole details of many visa, debit cards owners.

Analysis of all of the above cybercrime examples in India shows that with each passing year, the crime has grown.

There can be many causes of cybercrime in India, but if we see it globally, we lack in strong internet & cybersecurity laws and a global tool to shield every internet network.

“China, USA and India are the top three rankers respectively on whom malicious activities are done from different corners of the world.”

Also, Read: Even Password Managers are Vulnerable to Malware Attacks

Cybersecurity Measures Taken by the Indian Government

Due to the increase in the cybercrimes, The Information Technology Act, 2000 was established with the prime objective to create a secure environment for the commercial use of I.T.

The Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860 got revised to take into the accounts of cybercrimes. The government also took note of the effect of cyber-attack on the Indian economy.

With this view, the government initiated various programmes, laws, and acts to take precautionary measures of which few are discussed below;

• In April 2017, the MEITY (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology) issued measures to control CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) in India.
• On July 6, 2017, RBI issued a notification on Customer Protection by Limiting Liability of Customers in the Unauthorized Electronic Banking Transactions.
• Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) along with Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) are providing basic and advanced trainings to the Law Enforcement Agencies, Indian Forensic labs on the methodology of collecting, analyzing, finding and presenting digital evidence on malicious crimes.
• Cyber forensics training labs have set raining Academy of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Cyber Forensics and Investigation in the States of Kerala, Mizoram, Manipur, Assam, Nagaland, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Jammu & Kashmir.
• The government is also providing a centralized citizen portal connected to CCTNS - Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems for registering any online cyber-crime complaints.
• The set up of an Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) to fight against online malicious activities is an open platform for victims to report internet crimes.
• An app named "Samvid" is a desktop based Application that Whitelist solutions for the Windows operating system.
• In February 2017, CERT-in launched a Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Centre named 'Cyber Swachhta Kendra' that operate under Section 70B of the IT Act, 2000.

How to Prevent Cybercrime in Your Computer?

Cybersecurity is a new domain in the World Wide Web market that has the potential to generate millions of employers in the coming years and could become a force of technology and trade.

However, everything depends upon the governments who already understand the high time need of cyberlaw and global security policies.

The best preventive measure right now is upgrading cyber defense systems at your home and office computers with those cybersecurity tools that provide real-time protection feature, quarantine feature, web protection, and anti-exploit technology.

**Note: If your computer doesn’t have such security software, then download ITL Total Security and Malware Crusher to prevent cybercrimes on your system. Both are reputable, vigilant and robust in creating a shield 24X7 against any computer threat.

These tools are highly recommended if you are willing to give advanced security to your PC. Their 5-minute function could be a savior for your computer!

Tips to Prevent virus and malware from Infecting Your System: