Hacking Underworld Mafia’s New Venture

Technology was invented with an aim to make people's lives easier. But with the increased usage of technology in every aspect of life, people have started misusing it.When it comes to technology, the underworld too is not behind as they have started using high-tech methods to conduct crimes. Gone are the days when underworld used telephones and mobiles to extract money from business man and rich people. With the passage of time, these people too have become tech-savvy and started hiring software professionals to conduct such crimes. Due to recession, software students were finding it difficult to get a job. Those people who already were working with blue-chip software companies too were laid off. To bail themselves out some of these youths had taken up call centre jobs. For upgrading their technological knowledge, others joined hardware and software institutes.Since police are monitoring all the calls made from telephone booths and mobile phones, underworld has aggressively started using technology for executing criminal activities. Since the police can't ascertain the accused's identity there are minimal chances of him getting caught.
On the 14th of August IST at 5 am Gang bang, a project started by Indian Cyber Army (http://indishell.in) attacked several Pakistani websites. By the evening of 15th August the group members had already hacked 2000 Pakistani websites. According to the ICA members "Indian Cyber Army made this day memorable by writing a Golden page in their history.”
According to the Gang bang project “Half of the Pakistani Cyberspace is in the hands of Indian Cyber army. Many times, ICA has warned the Pakistani hackers to stop hacking smaller sites but they turned a blind eye towards it. Now it’s our turn to teach them a lesson. No more peace deals or whatever. ICA has defaced half of the Pakistani Cyberspace. This is a fitting replay to these hackers who have acted irresponsibly.”
Pakistani hackers too counterattacked which resulted in a cyber war between Pakistan and India. The police is finding it difficult to trace the identity of hackers as they use alpha numeric names like 4K, 3K, L 3T. Ironically such type of passwords can never be detected.
Many of the hackers are holders of black money and deposit money in the Swiss accounts. They smartly carry out the transactions and use different types of account to deposit money. As a result of this, they are never caught. This type of crime is known as dark crime.
Such types of crime not only have an adverse affect on the Indian economy but also the global economy. Few months back, African citizens used to be involved in scams through mail involving smaller amounts. These days' people are aware of such type of malpractices and hence nobody becomes a victim of such tactics. One of the intelligence sources told this paper that mafias have devised a new strategy for hiring software professionals. Some of the Software Trainers devote their time in tracking bank transaction, government websites and personal details of common people. Lump-sum amount of money is transferred online from one account to another. Hence the authorities find it difficult to trace the identity of the culprit. Since these people operate from foreign countries, it is difficult to nab them. Even if anybody is caught then the group members can easily release them. Economic crimes are still not considered as serious crimes in India. Nowadays most of the criminal activities are conducted in cyber cafes that don't ask for visitor's identity proof. To perform such activities, the culprits open fake email id and conceal their identity. These people claim to be bank employees and send email to the customers asking them to update their account details. They ask personal information of customers like account number, pan number, credit card number, date of birth and other sensitive information. To make matters worse, some of the online crimes are committed at foreign locations which are untraceable. Some hackers use Wi-Fi systems which are not secured. The customers often fall prey to such activities and share their personal information mistaking these people as bank employees. These people are professional hackers and also know how to extract customer's passwords and login ids. Finally, these people succeed in stealing lumpsum money from account of innocent people. After such incidents occur, the customer finds it difficult to claim his money. The police are not trained to tackle such crimes. The underworld is well aware of this fact and use technology to conduct such type of crimes. When AV spoke to Vijay Mukhi, President-FIST & Consultant, Technology Practice, DSK Legal, he said “The government has to play a proactive role to curb cyber crimes. If a message is sent today, then there is no mechanism to monitor such incidents. The government must develop software for monitoring the cyberspace activities in real-time basis.”