By Siddhartha D. Kashyap
Times News Network

Even as the nation comes to terms with the high-profile cyber crime by a 24-year-old engineering student from Pune, who secured donations by forging President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s signature, city-based Asian School of Cyber Laws (ASCL) on Thursday released its first-ever report on cyber crime trends in the country.

Prasanjit Kamble, a student of Dnyaneshwar Vidyapeeth, Pune, was picked up by the Mumbai police on Wednesday from a cybercafe for sending e-mails while posing as a senior member of the President’s scientific team, which was instrumental in carrying out the Pokhran nuclear tests.

According to the ASCL report, 34 per cent of the 6,266 incidents of computer crime analysed from January 2001 to December 202 were reported from the information technology (IT) sector, followed by 20 per cent from the manufacturing sector.

The ‘other services’ sector, which included insurance, transport, travel and consultants, recorded 14 per cent of cyber crime-related incidents, while the financial services sector (banks, investment companies and brokerage houses) was next at 12 per cent. Education, telecommunication and healthcare sectors accounted for eight, five and three percent respectively.

Abhinav Bhatt, a consultant who worked on the survey, said incidents of cyber crime ranged from obscene, threatening and defamatory emails to computer-aided sabotage, source code thefts and attempted cyber murders.

Regarding virus-related incidents, he said only those incidents were reported where the virus attack was attributed to an unidentified malicious attacker. Another high light of the survey, which is an attempt to gauge the seriousness of cyber crime in India, was that only those incidents had been reported and analysed, which have not been reported to the law enforcement authorities.

While a little over small, medium and large-scale organisations from a wide spectrum of industries were included in the survey, the report stated that in terms of numbers, data theft incidents were the most widespread, accounting for 33 per cent of the overall reported incidents.

E-mail abuse incidents were second at 22.5 per cent, while unauthorized access incidents came a distant third at 18.5 per cent. Bhatt said incidents of unauthorized data alteration accounted for 15.5 per cent of the total cases analysed, followed by targeted virus attacks with five per cent. Other incidents, including web-defacement, accounted for 2.5 per cent.

The report further stated that 60 per cent of email abuses were obscene mails, sent mostly (97 per cent) to female employees, while 25 per cent related to threatening mails. Most of these targeted the top management of the victim organization, the report stated, adding that the remaining email abuses were aimed at defaming employees.

While over 60 per cent of the victims did not report the matter because of fear of negative publicity, 23 per cent did not know whether the police were technically equipped to handle computer crimes.

Nine per cent feared that if the incidents were reported and subsequently published in the media, then more such attacks would ensue, while eight per cent did not know that Indian laws extended to computer crime too.

Overall, 21 per cent of the reported incidents were traced back to employees, while 31 per cent were traced to former employees of the victim organisation. Business rivalry was a major factor, with 29 per cent of the reported incidents being traced to rival organisations.