Can hack any computer anywhere, claims techie
Source: Newindpress.com
Date: July 10, 2003
CHENNAI: A few reporters here were shocked to listen to a young CEO of a city-based Internet company claiming that he could "enter" any computer in any network throughout the world and retrieve data from it.
"What about George Bush's system?" a reporter asked. "Give me 48 hours and if the President's computer is online for that long, I can get into it," was the reply from M Jayashankar, CEO, Caliber Plus - an Internet firm in Kodambakkam.
The media interaction with Jayashankar took place at a press conference organised by Caliber Plus recently at the Chennai Press Club to announce the prevalence of an Internet scam, "Nigeria-419", in India and to prevent people from falling a prey to it.
At least 30 Indians had already fallen victims to the scam, in which e-mails had been sent to ordinary people requesting the transfer of $ 30 million into their accounts from a "Nigerian official", Jayashankar said.
"There is one person from Chennai too. He had sent some money to the scamsters operating from Hong Kong thinking that he would get the money," he said. However, he refused to give details about the "victim" from Chennai as he got the information by hacking into the scamsters' system by cracking their user names and passwords.
Jayashankar claimed he was working in co-ordination with CBI officials in Delhi and he was now monitoring all mails being sent to the tricksters. "The photographs and details of the scamsters retrieved by entering into their system were handed over to the CBI and they are tracking them down," he said.
The city police, who have now launched a massive drive against cyber crimes, said there were several such scams and the police would have to look at the issue wholistically by rooting it out from the base.
Speaking to this website's newspaper, Deputy Commissioner of Police (T Nagar), S Murugan, said the police was starting its initiative against cyber crimes by regulating the activities of cyber cafes. "Hackers function from their homes or from private computers. While these will be difficult to monitor, what we could do is to check the cyber crimes taking place at Internet centres," Murugan said.
The Internet cafe owners had responded favourably, as they were the people who would be held responsible if a threatening e-mail or any other cyber crime took place from any of the computers at their centre, he said.
While the guidelines given by the police to these centres are likely to be given a legal sanction soon, the city police are trying to promote certain advanced cyber security systems, especially among banks, to intensify their fight against such crimes.
Murugan said the police would be mooting the use of "Bio Metric" technology which would not depend on the use of user names or passwords. In Bio Metrics, the user's fingerprints (as registered on the computer mouse) or the retina of the user is used as an identification to let the user to log on to the site. Such systems could be used by the banks to keep the hackers at bay.
The research papers being prepared by the city police would be presented before bankers in the city at a meeting to be organised by city Commissioner of Police K Vijaykumar soon, Murugan added.
Original article: http://www.newindpress.com/Newsitems.asp?ID=IET20030709134322&Title=Southern+News+-+Tamil+Nadu&rLink=0
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