Saturday, February 23, 2008

Should spoofing be part of the cyber crime?

SPOOFING:-

Definition:
There are many definitions of spoofing.

Faking the sending address of a transmission in order to gain illegal entry into a secure system.

To capture, alter, and retransmit a communication stream in a way that misleads the recipient. As used by hackers, refers especially to altering TCP/IP packet source addresses or other packet-header data in order to masquerade as a trusted machine. This term has become very widespread and is borderline techs peak. Interestingly, it was already in use in its modern sense more than a century ago among Victorian telegraphers; it shows up in Kipling.

TYPES OF SPOOFING:-

There are different types of spoofing.

Email Spoofing:-
Email spoofing refers to email that appears to have been originated from one source when it was actually sent from another source.

Web page Spoofing (phishing):-
Another kind of spoofing is "webpage spoofing," also known as phishing. In this attack, a legitimate web page such as a bank's site is reproduced in "look and feel" on another server under control of the attacker. The intent is to fool the users into thinking that they are connected to a trusted site, for instance to harvest user names and passwords.

Caller ID Spoofing:-
In public telephone networks, it has for a long while been possible to find out who is calling you by looking at the Caller ID information that is transmitted with the call.

Login Spoofing:-
The user is presented with an ordinary looking login prompt for username and password, which is actually a malicious program under the control of the attacker.

Spoofing Of File Sharing:-
"Spoofing" also refers to polluting the illegal file-sharing networks where record labels share files that are mislabeled, distorted or empty to discourage downloading from these sources.

SHOULD SPOOFING BE A PART OF THE CYBER CRIME??

As far as this question is concerned there may be different views of different people based upon their own views. For me I think that spoofing should be a part of the cyber crime. Seeing at the different definitions and types of the spoofing above it is very much clear that spoofing is widely used by the hackers in different forms. To avoid hacking and illegal acts it should be banned as cyber crime.

One disadvantage of being banned spoofing is that there will be no anonymity. Although this is a big loss but seeing at the disadvantages of the spoofing I will say that this should be banned.

CRIME:-
An act committed or omitted in violation of a law forbidding or commanding it and for which punishment is imposed upon conviction.
Unlawful activity: statistics relating to violent crime.
A serious offense, especially one in violation of morality.
An unjust, senseless, or disgraceful act or condition: It's a crime to squander our country's natural resources


BUDAPEST CONVENTION:-

Article 7 – Computer-related forgery

Each Party shall adopt such legislative and other measures as may be necessary to establish as criminal offences under its domestic law, when committed intentionally and without right, the input, alteration, deletion, or suppression of computer data, resulting in inauthentic data with the intent that it be considered or acted upon for legal purposes as if it were authentic, regardless whether or not the data is directly readable and intelligible. A Party may require an intent to defraud, or similar dishonest intent, before criminal liability attaches.
Article 8 – Computer-related fraud
Each Party shall adopt such legislative and other measures as may be necessary to establish as criminal offences under its domestic law, when committed intentionally and without right, the causing of a loss of property to another person by:
a any input, alteration, deletion or suppression of computer data,
b any interference with the functioning of a computer system,
with fraudulent or dishonest intent of procuring, without right, an economic benefit for oneself or for another person.
References:-
1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoofing_attack
2) http://www.lse.ac.uk/itservices/help/spamming&spoofing.htm
3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_spoofing
4) http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid14_gci840262,00.html

Friday, February 22, 2008

Review :- FUTURE OF IDEAS

Lawrence lessig The Author of the Book "FUTURE OF IDEAS"




The Internet revolution has come. Some say it has gone. What was responsible for its birth? Who is responsible for its demise?
In The Future of Ideas, Lawrence Lessig explains how the Internet revolution has produced a counterrevolution of devastating power and effect. The explosion of innovation we have seen in the environment of the Internet was not conjured from some new, previously unimagined technological magic; instead, it came from an ideal as old as the nation. Creativity flourished there because the Internet protected an innovation commons. The Internet?s very design built a neutral platform upon which the widest range of creators could experiment. The legal architecture surrounding it protected this free space so that culture and information — the ideas of our era — could flow freely and inspire an unprecedented breadth of expression. But this structural design is changing — both legally and technically.
This shift will destroy the opportunities for creativity and innovation that the Internet originally engendered. The cultural dinosaurs of our recent past are moving to quickly remake cyberspace so that they can better protect their interests against the future. Powerful conglomerates are swiftly using both law and technology to "tame" the Internet, transforming it from an open forum for ideas into nothing more than cable television on speed. Innovation, once again, will be directed from the top down, increasingly controlled by owners of the networks, holders of the largest patent portfolios, and, most invidiously, hoarders of copyrights.
The choice Lawrence Lessig presents is not between progress and the status quo. It is between progress and a new Dark Ages, in which our capacity to create is confined by an architecture of control and a society more perfectly monitored and filtered than any before in history. Important avenues of thought and free expression will increasingly be closed off. The door to a future of ideas is being shut just as technology makes an extraordinary future possible.
With an uncanny blend of knowledge, insight, and eloquence, Lawrence Lessig has written a profoundly important guide to the care and feeding of innovation in a connected world. Whether it proves to be a road map or an elegy is up to us.The Future of Ideas is a call to arms that we can ill afford to ignore.