Diplomats finalized a set of proposals to the United Nations Friday. The steps include developing international standards for conduct over the Internet, sharing information about each country’s cybersecurity laws, and helping less-developed nations strengthen their computer defenses.

Diplomatic progress on cybersecurity has stagnated in recent years, but U.S. President Barack Obama made the issue one of his administration’s priorities.

Russia has proposed a cybersecurity treaty similar to international restrictions on chemical weapons. The U.S. previously has rejected the idea.

Other countries that agreed to Friday’s proposals were Belarus, Brazil, Britain, Estonia, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Qatar, South Africa and South Korea.

source: http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/science-technology/15-Countries-Outline-Principles-on-Cyber-Security-98661289.html

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After completing the investigations, the Cyber Crime Investigation Cell raided the flat of the 42 year old lieutenant last week, who was caught red handed, while downloading porn clippings. The Mumbai Police has collected the hard disks, mobile phones, print outs, etc from the residence of the Army officer and booked him under section 67A of Information technology Act.

If convicted, he can be sentenced to a maximum seven years in jail and also fined Rs 10 lakh.  The accused has been remanded to Police Custody till 12 May 2010.

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Jaisankar Marimuthu, 36, a native of Chennai, India, was also ordered to pay $2.4 million in restitution. Marimuthu pleaded guilty on Feb. 5, 2010, to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, securities fraud, computer fraud and aggravated identity theft, and to one count of aggravated identity theft before U.S. District Magistrate Judge F.A. Gossett III in Omaha, Neb. Marimuthu, who was extradited to the United States following his arrest in Hong Kong, was sentenced today before U.S. District Judge Laurie Smith Camp.

According to court documents, Marimuthu was part of a conspiracy that operated out of Thailand and India from February 2006 through December 2006 in which the prices of thinly-traded securities were fraudulently inflated by hacking into brokerage accounts in the United States and then illegally using the accounts to make large, unauthorized purchases of securities in the name of the unsuspecting customers. Marimuthu admitted that after the price of the securities had been artificially increased or “pumped up” through the bogus trading, the conspirators’ own holdings of the securities would be sold at a profit. More than 90 customers and seven brokerage firms in the United States have been identified as victims. Financial losses of close to $2.5 million were sustained by the victims in this case.

more @ http://cyberlaws.us/indian-national-sentenced-to-81-months-in-prison-for-role-in-international-online-brokerage-“hack-pump-and-dump”-scheme/

Download Report @ http://eval.symantec.com/mktginfo/enterprise/white_papers/b-whitepaper_exec_summary_internet_security_threat_report_xv_04-2010.en-us.pdf

The Department of Information Technology has informed that the Controller of Certifying Authorities (CCA), and authority under the then section 69 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 had directed M/s Google India, M/s Yahoo India and M/s Microsoft (MSN Search Engine) to ensure that no advertisements of sponsored links in respect of sex selection appear on search results on their websites M/s Google India, M/s Yahoo India and M/s Microsoft responded to such directions. M/s Yahoo India and MSN Search Engine stated that their search engine do not provide any sponsored links within India on sex selection or determination. Also they take due diligence to enforce such restriction. M/s Google has responded that their search engine do not allow users from India to search websites relating to prenatal sex determination. In case of an inadvertent slippage, and upon being notified of the presence of a non-complaint advertisement, a prompt and effective action is taken in disabling such sites by them. M/s Google has very clearly state that whenever an advertiser chooses to target users in India, the access to such advertisements is blocked to users with Indian IP address and users searching on the India domain loggers www.googleco.in. In addition, Google has developed technology that help implement the advertisement policy by preventing advertisements from appearing on certain “Keywords” on the Google website. The list of such keywords is constantly upgraded and there are on-going efforts to ensure that the list is comprehensive. The list of such keywords which have been blocked from triggering or sponsored results include – sex determination, determination of sex/gender, male/female selection method, choose the gender of your baby, gender determination, gender pre-selection, gender prediction, gender selection, sex pre-selection, sex prediction, sex selection etc.

This information was given by Minister of State for Health & Family Welfare, Shri Dinesh Trivedi in written reply to a question raised in Rajya Sabha today.

source: http://www.pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=60976

The trend of Phishing has increased over the years, though decisions has been very rare. But the recent decision as reported by naavi.org, pronounced by IT Adjudicator of Tamil Nadu is commendable, wherein an award of 12.85 lakhs have been pronounced in favor of the petitioner. The copy of the judgment is available here.

In another decision by a Mumbai Consumer court in a similar matter, the bank has been held guilty as as bank did not took precautions as per the RBI Net banking guidelines, while complainants account was hacked and 4.6 lakhs were transferred out by the cyber criminals.

Though in such matters, it is advisable that the victim should approach Adjudication Officers as appointed under the IT Act 2000 rather than consumer court, as former are technically qualified persons and specialized in the matters of cyber crime. Every Indian state has an adjudication officer, who are the IT secretaries of their respective states.

Software expert tried to take revenge against a women, who turned down his marriage proposal, falls into cyber crime cell net. Engineer had put obscene profiles of the victim on various networking sites like Facebook and Orkut and also sent letter through post containing morphed pictures of the girl, with written message in Telgu, which formed the basic evidence and led to his arrest by Hyderabad Police.

He would be punished under various provisions of Information Technology Act, especially section 67, which provides for publishing of obscene material in electronic form and Indian Penal Code !

Video by NewsX.com

All stakeholders are hereby informed that the provisions regarding stamp duty payment on Form No. 1, Memorandum of Association, Articles of Association, Form No. 5 and Form No. 44 electronically, at the time of their e-filing through MCA portal (www.mca.gov.in) in respect of the States and Union Territories mentioned below, shall be mandatory with effect from 01st April 2010. Please refer Notifications Number GSR 642(E) and SO 2276(E) dated 07-09-2009 and SO 3314(E) dated 31-12-2009 issued by the Ministry.

List of States and Union Territories:

Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.

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Notification: http://www.mca.gov.in/Ministry/notification/pdf/GSR_642%28E%29_9Sept2009.pdf

In the Companies (Electronic Filing and Authentication of Documents) Rules, 2006, in rule 3, in sub-rule (1), after the proviso, the following proviso shall be inserted, namely :-

“ Provided further that if stamp duty on such documents is paid electronically through Ministry of Corporate Affairs portal www.mca.gov.in, in such case, the company shall not be required to make physical submissition of such documents, in addition to their submission in the electronic form:

Provided also that in respect of certain documents filed under the Companies Act, 1956 which are not covered for payment of stamp duty through Ministry of Corporate Affairs portal, and stamp duty payable on such documents in respective state is equal to or less than one hundred rupees, the company shall scan such stamped documents
complete in all respects and shall file electronically for evidencing by the Registrar and shall not be required to submit such documents, except those which are required to be filed for compounding of offences under clasue (a) of sub-section (4) of section 621A of the Companies Act, 1956, in the physical form separately:

Provided also that the company shall retain such documents duly stamped in original for a minimum period of three years from the date of filing of such documents and shall be required to produce the same as and when the same is required for inspection and verification by the competent authority being the Collector of Stamps of respective State or Union territory or the Registrar”.

Although the complaints consisted of a variety of fraud types, advanced fee scams that fraudulently used the FBI’s name ranked number one (16.6 percent). Non-delivery of merchandise and/or payment was the second most reported offense (11.9 percent).

The 2009 Annual Report details information related to the volume and scope of complaints, complainant and perpetrator characteristics, geographical data, most frequently reported scams and results of IC3 referrals.

“Law enforcement relies on the corporate sector and citizens to report when they encounter on-line suspicious activity so these schemes can be investigated and criminals can be arrested,” stated Peter Trahon, Section Chief of the FBI’s Cyber Division. “Computer users are encouraged to have up-to-date security protection on their devices and evaluate email solicitations they receive with a healthy skepticism—if something seems too good to be true, it likely is.”

NW3C Director Donald Brackman said the report’s findings underscore the threat posed by cyber criminals. “The figures contained in this report indicate that criminals are continuing to take full advantage of the anonymity afforded them by the Internet. They are also developing increasingly sophisticated means of defrauding unsuspecting consumers. Internet crime is evolving in ways we couldn’t have imagined just five years ago.” But Brackman sounded an optimistic tone about the future. “With the public’s continued support, law enforcement will be better able to track down these perpetrators and bring them to justice.”

Complete report can be downloaded from: http://www.ic3.gov/media/annualreport/2009_IC3Report.pdf

source: Press Release by IC3