Saturday, February 6, 2010

Hacking And my Country

The term hacker and hacking make a negative impact on normal human's mind. People think of hackers as the new generation cyber criminals who take over control and destroy the information. Actually, hacking is not just fiddling out with information and hackers are not always hungry for destruction. Its media hype. There is something called ethical hacking which involves testing penetration into computers and networks and finding, fixing, securing loopholes. In short, ethical hacking is exactly opposite to what you were thinking of hacking till now. Actual hackers not necessary always work with underground communities. They can be security professionals, who have extensive knowledge of this field. Also known as white hats. Hacking is a vast field and it involves various tools, processes, methods depending on your target and what you want to exploit. There is not any central tool owning which the person is ready to get called as hacker. Extensive knowledge of programming, applications, networking, and tools is necessary for a hacker.

I have been in some groups of patriotic hackers. These patriotic hackers hack and deface websites mostly of their rival countries. This action gives them pleasure of doing something for country. There is nothing wrong in working for motherland. However, performing an illegal thing like hacking without any strong cause makes it as an offense. Here, one thing needs to be considered that most of the nations have patriotic hackers in them. When some major websites or networks of a country have been defaced by their rivals, they probably won’t keep quiet. Now the patriots of this nation will slam the other by attacking their websites. This results into a chain reaction. There starts a competition between hackers of two nations. This is where the concept ‘cyber war’ is introduced.

Our India is also, not far away from this threat. We have got plenty of rivals for our country. Internet is expanding at tremendous speed. It is reaching in each and every corner of world each day. As the internet is growing, more and more people are getting introduced to hacking. Many of them are taking up learning this. There is an increase in concern because most of the hacking knowledge is encompassed in circle of internet. There is not strong implementation of laws against cybercrime (which involves hacking) in many countries including India. Countries like china are even thought of supporting hackers. Pakistani hackers are also on prowl of getting juicy Indian targets. In some of the recent defacements of Indian websites, hackers apparent from Pakistan have given their strong political message against our country. Chinese hackers have also put forth their intimidation. However, Indian hackers are also not behind. They have replied back in the same coin very well. But this act is neither going to stop the chain not going to shield our country against hackers.

Here rises the need of security. No need to tell its importance in computer field. It is must to protect sensitive data and dignity. If security is not properly taken care of, it leads to its breach spoiling the image of target. It is becoming vital part of IT systems. Misuse of confidential information and loss of dignity are major consequences of security breach.

Now we are going to view the government approach over this. Government bodies who look after this are said to be lazy and careless about their work. As stated by our patriotic hackers, there are many vulnerabilities in our government websites. The systems and software they are using are outdated. They are not up to date with latest technologies. Many of them are not concerned in going into nitty-gritty of security and bringing about change. Just the defective part is removed and very few attempts are made to repair and restore stolen information. Tracing back the hacker is still a long way to go. This all has affected our standing in security. Even Indian anti viruses haven’t yet given tough competition for the race of top anti viruses.

So, what do we lack? Are there no laws against cybercrime and hacking? No. This is not the case. We have laws. But we lack in facilities offered to cyber security. This is ultimately due to short or corrupt donation provided to this. Due to shortage of facilities, there is no adequate implementation of laws. This makes fewer obstacles in the way of committing cybercrime. It’s even not the case that we lack talent. But we are unfortunate that India’s talent is serving other nations. Nothing else. This coin also has other side. There are Indian hackers who are willing to work for India in a positive way. What keeps them apart is the negative impression of the term ‘hacker’. Actually, there is nothing wrong in this. A knowledgeable person must get chance to work for the nation if he is willing to.

Finally, I am going to highlight the thing which can bring about the change. In India, media is said to have more power than government. Every day, media reaches to all roots of the society. If media takes a point at stake, the government has to act on it and stabilize the situation. We see media as the ray of hope for the sake of cyber security of our motherland.

In the end, I would like to say something,

“Whatever field you may go in, gain as much knowledge as you want, but don’t forget your responsibility for your motherland because this is the only place where you belong and can claim to be your own.”