We are anonymous, we are legion

Mapping of India’s Cyber Security-Related Bilateral Agreements

Leilah Elmokadem and Saumyaa Naidu — 2017-04-27T15:14:55Z

With the rapid spread of cloud computing and the growth of cyber spaces, large masses of information are now easily transmittable transnationally, necessitating the ratification of new agreements and cooperation efforts amongst states in order to secure cyber spaces and regulate exchanges of information. In an attempt to understand the nature and extent of current international collaborative efforts in cyber security, we have compiled the following data regarding India’s cyber security-related bilateral agreements. The intention of this exercise is to offer a dynamic visualization that demonstrates which countries India has collaborated with on cyber security efforts and initiatives. This is an ongoing map that we will be updating as our research continues.

Download: Infographic (PDF) and data (XLSX)

The data used for the info-graphic consists of India’s MLATs, cyber security-related MoUs and Joint Statements, and Cyber Frameworks. An MLAT is an agreement between two or more countries, drafted for the purpose of gathering and exchanging information in an effort to enforce public or criminal laws. A MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) is a nonbinding agreement between two or more states outlining the terms and details of an understanding, including each party’s requirements and responsibility; it is often the first stage in the formation of a formal contract. For the purpose of this research, we have grouped Joint Statements with MoUs, as they both generally entail the informal agreement between two states to strengthen cooperation on certain issues. Lastly, a Cyber Framework consists of standards, guidelines and practices to promote protection of critical infrastructure. The data accounts for agreements centered on cyber security as well as any agreements mentioning cooperation efforts in Cyber Security, information security or cybercrime.

The Mapping of India’s Cybersecurity-related bilateral agreement has been updated on April 12, 2017 with the following changes:

A new MoU was signed between Australia and India in April 2017, focusing on combating terrorism and civil aviation security. Cybersecurity cooperation is mentioned in the MoU[1].
A new MoU was signed between Bangladesh and India in April 2017. The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the ICT Division of Bangladesh are the signing parties of the MoU. The agreement focuses on Cooperation in the area of Cyber Security[2].
A preexisting MoU between France and India was added to the mapping, signed in January of 2016. Officials of both countries agreed to intensify cooperation between the Indian and French security forces in the fields of homeland security, cyber security, Special Forces and intelligence sharing to fight against criminal networks and tackle the common threat of terrorism[3].
A new MoU was signed between Indonesia and India in March 2017. It focuses on enhancing cooperation in cyber security and intelligence sharing[4].
A new MoU was signed between Kenya and India in January 2017, with “cyber security” mentioned as one of the key areas of cooperation[5].
A preexisting MoU between Malaysia and India was added to the mapping, signed in November of 2015. Both sides agreed to promote cooperation and the exchange of information regarding cyber security incident management, technology cooperation and cyber attacks, prevalent policies and best practices and mutual response to cyber security incidents[6].
A preexisting MoU between Mauritius and India, signed July 2016, was added to the mapping. This is a non-governmental MoU. Leading bourse BSE signed an agreement with Stock Exchange of Mauritius (SEM) for collaboration in areas including cyber security[7].
A new joint statement between India and Portugal was signed in March 2017. The two countries agreed to set up an institutional mechanism to collaborate in the areas of electronic manufacturing, ITeS, startups, cyber security and e-governance.[8]
A preexisting MoU, signed between Qatar and India in December of 2016, was added to the mapping. The agreement was regarding a protocol on technical cooperation in cyberspace and combatting cybercrime[9].
A new MoU was signed between Serbia and India in January 2017, focusing on cooperation in the field of IT, Electronics. The MoU itself does not explicitly mention cybersecurity. However, the MoU calls for cooperation and exchanges in capacity building institutions, which should entail cyber security strengthening[10].
A preexisting MoU between Singapore and India was added to the mapping. The MoU was signed in January 2016, focusing on the establishment of a formal framework for professional dialogue, CERT-CERT related cooperation for operational readiness and response, collaboration on cyber security technology and research related to smart technologies, exchange of best practices, and professional exchanges of human resource development[11].
A new joint statement was signed between UAE and India in January 2017, following up on their previous Technical Cooperation MoU signed in February 2016. To further deepen cooperation in this area, they agreed to set up joint Research & Development Centres of Excellence[12].
A preexisting MoU has been included in the mapping, signed in May of 2016. CERT-In agreed with the UK Ministry of Cabinet Office to promote close cooperation between both countries in the exchange in knowledge and experience in detection, resolution and prevention of security related incidents[13].
A new MoU between India and the US was signed in March 2017. CERT-In and CERT-US signed a MoU agreeing to promote closer co-operation and exchange of information pertaining to cyber security in accordance with relevant laws, rules and regulations and on the basis of equality, reciprocity and mutual benefit[14].
A new MoU was signed between Vietnam and India in January 2017, agreeing to promote closer cooperation for exchange of knowledge and experience in detection, resolution and prevention of cyber security incidents between both countries[15].

NOTE: Some preexisting MoUs were added as we were initially only including the most recent agreements in the mapping. Upon adding newly signed MoUs, we decided to also keep the preexisting ones and revisit the other entries to include any preexisting MoUs that were initially excluded due to not being the most-recent. In this respect, the visualization will be adjusted to indicate the number of MoUs per country.

[1]http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-india-australia-sign-mous-on-combating-terrorism-civil-aviation-security-2393843

[2]http://www.theindependentbd.com/arcprint/details/89237/2017-04-09

[3]http://www.thehindu.com/news/resources/Full-text-of-Joint-Statement-issued-by-India-France/article14019524.ece

[4]http://indianexpress.com/article/india/indianhome-ministry-indonesian-ministry-of-security-and-coordination/

[5]https://telanganatoday.news/india-kenya-focus-defence-security-cooperation-pm

[6]http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/foreign-trade/india-and-malaysia-sign-3-mous-including-cyber-security/articleshow/49891897.cms

[7]http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/bse-mauritius-stock-exchange-tie-up-to-promote-financial-mkts/1/723635.html

[8]http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/business/india-portugal-to-collaborate-in-ites-cyber-security/373666.html

[9]http://naradanews.com/2016/12/india-qatar-sign-agreements-on-visa-cybersecurity-investments/

[10]http://ehub.newsforce.in/cabinet-approves-mou-india-serbia-cooperation-field-electronics/

[11]http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/government-economy/singapore-and-india-strengthen-cooperation-on-cyber-security

[12]http://mea.gov.in/bilateral-documents.htm?dtl/27969/India++UAE+Joint+Statement+during+State+visit+of+Crown+Prince+of+Abu+Dhabi+to+India+January+2426+2017

[13]http://www.bestcurrentaffairs.com/india-uk-mou-cyber-security/

[14]http://www.dqindia.com/india-cert-signs-an-mou-with-us-cert/

[15]http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=157458

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/india-cyber-security-bilateral-agreements-map-dec-2016

Rankathon on Digital Rights (Delhi, January 08)

amber — 2016-12-29T07:10:09Z

Please join us on Sunday, January 08, at the CIS office in Hauz Khas, Delhi, for a rankathon to visualise, and contribute to the findings of the Ranking Digital Rights study, and critique the underlying methodology. The event will begin at 10:00 in the morning and participants can focus on one or more of three kinds of tasks: 1) visualising the CIS and Ranking Digital Rights data, 2) evaluating additional companies using the RDR methodology, and 3) evaluating the RDR methodology and its suitability for independent use.

Download: Invitation (PDF)

The Ranking Digital Rights Corporate Responsibility Index is a project hosted by the Open Technology Institute at New America Foundation that aims to rank Information and Communications Technology (ICTs) companies with respect to their Governance, Freedom of Expression, and Privacy practices. The inaugural Corporate Accountability Index, released in November 2015, evaluated 16 companies based on the project’s methodology that included 31 indicators in total.

visualising the CIS and Ranking Digital Rights data,
evaluating additional companies using the RDR methodology, and
evaluating the RDR methodology and its suitability for independent use.

The event is open to all but the venue has limited space. The participants are requested to RSVP by sending an email to nisha@cis-india.org. The final date for registering for the event is January 04.

All visualisations and other outputs produced at the event will be published under open licenses. All participants are expected to bring their own laptop or any other items needed for their work. CIS will offer data, help with understanding how the Ranking Digital Rights methodology work, refreshments, and any other support as needed.

We are also organising a discussion event on Saturday, January 07, at the India Islamic Cultural Centre, Delhi, to present our findings on digital rights practices of 8 Indian ICT companies, followed by an open structured discussion on the methodology of the Ranking Digital Rights study. Please find more details about this here.

We look forward to your participation and contribution to the discussion. Please support us by sharing this invitation with your colleagues and networks.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/rankathon-on-digital-rights-delhi-jan-08-2017

Discussion on Ranking Digital Rights in India (Delhi, January 07)

amber — 2016-12-29T07:07:34Z

Towards developing an understanding of how Indian ICT companies are recognising and upholding digital rights of their users, and to raise public awareness about the same, the Center for Internet and Society (CIS), with the support of Privacy International, has studied 8 Indian ICT companies, using the same methodology as the 2015 Corporate Accountability Index, to gain greater insight into company practices and initiate public dialogues. Please join us on Saturday, January 07, at the India Islamic Cultural Centre, New Delhi, for a presentation of our findings followed by an open structured discussion on the methodology and implications of the study.

Download: Invitation and agenda (PDF)

Please join us on Saturday, January 07, at the India Islamic Cultural Centre, New Delhi, for a presentation of our findings followed by an open structured discussion on the methodology and implications of the Ranking Digital Rights study. We will begin at 10:30 am with a round of tea and coffee.

The event is open to all but the venue has limited space. The participants are requested to RSVP by sending an email to nisha@cis-india.org.

To further encourage programmers, researchers, journalists, students, and users in general to use and contribute to the findings of the Ranking Digital Rights study, and critique the underlying methodology, we are also organising a “rankathon” on Sunday, January 08, at the CIS office in Delhi. More details can be found here.

We look forward to your participation and contribution to the discussion. Please support us by sharing this invitation with your colleagues and networks.

Agenda

10:30-11:00	Coffee and Tea
11:00-11:15	Introduction
11:15-13:00	Presentation of the Findings and Discussion Divij Joshi and Aditya Singh Chawla
13:00-14:00	Lunch
14:00-15:00	Open Discussion #1: Parameters of Evaluation The RDR methodology was based upon evaluating commitments to uphold human rights through their services – in particular towards their commitment to users’ freedom of expression and privacy. Are there other parameters that may be considered in the Indian context?
15:00-16:00	Open Discussion #2: Towards Protecting Digital Rights What steps can be taken by the government, civil society, and industry in India to create an environment that recognizes and protects users digital rights? What are the relevant legal, political, and economic factors to take into consideration towards this? What are steps that other, multinational ICT companies have taken? Would these be realistic for Indian companies to implement?
16:00-16:30	Conclusion
16:30-17:00	Coffee and Tea

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/discussion-on-ranking-digital-rights-in-india-delhi-jan-07-2017

‘IT hub’ K’taka ranks No 12 in e-deals

praskrishna — 2016-12-28T01:54:33Z

Karnataka may be dubbed the ‘IT hub’ of the country but when it comes to e-governance transactions, the state clearly has a long way to go. Statistics from Union government web portal Electronic Transaction Aggregation and Analysis Layer (etaal), which manages e-transactions undertaken by e-governance projects, suggests that Karnataka ranks 12th in the country with just 5.66 crore e-transactions this year as of Monday.

The article by Christin Mathew Philip was published in the New Indian Express on December 27, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

Among the states with maximum number of e-transactions this year so far are Andhra Pradesh, topping the list with 101 crore e-transactions followed by Telangana (80.35 crore e- transactions) and Kerala (75.30 crore e-transactions).

Karnataka’s poor standing on the e-governance transactions front can largely be attributed to a low number of e-services - 86 - in sharp contrast to Andhra Pradesh’s 250. The e-services include registration of births and deaths, land record registration, utility, bill payments and other government related services.

This clearly underlines the fact that Karnataka needs to include more government services online and also create more awareness among the people about the existing e-governance projects to achieve ‘digital India’ and cashless payment system.

When contacted, Karnataka’s IT minister Priyank Kharge said: “Karnataka is a pioneer in e-governance projects, which includes Bhoomi, Khajane and Mobile-One. Mobile-One is offering nearly 4,500 services, both government and private services at the finger tip. All these initiatives have become the model for other states.”

Statistics from Union government web portal Electronic Transaction Aggregation and Analysis Layer (etaal), which manages e-transactions undertaken by e-governance projects, suggests that Karnataka ranks 12th in the country.

Commenting on this, IT Minister Priyank Kharge said, “The Centre has also recently ranked Karnataka at No.13 in ease of doing business in the country. I don’t know how they are coming up with such rankings without considering the merit.”

Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet Society, a Bengaluru based-research organisation, said: “The government should make e-services friendly to the citizens and also make it more transparent.” He said implementation of proposed Electronic Service Delivery Bill, which will make it mandatory for every government organisation to deliver public services online at a stipulated period, will bring more accountability and attract more people to use government e-services.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/new-indian-express-december-27-2016-christin-philip-mathew-it-hub-karnataka-ranks-12-in-e-deals

Incident Response Requirements in Indian Law

vipul — 2016-12-28T01:19:28Z

Cyber incidents have serious consequences for societies, nations, and those who are victimised by them. The theft, exploitation, exposure or otherwise damage of private, financial, or other sensitive personal or commercial data and cyber attacks that damage computer systems are capable of causing lasting harm.

A recent example of such an attack that we have seen from India is the recent data breach involving an alleged 3.2 million debit cards in India.^[1] In the case of this hack the payment processing networks such as National Payments Corporation of India, Visa and Mastercard, informed the banks regarding the leaks, based on which the banks started the process of blocking and then reissuing the compromised cards. It has also been reported that the banks failed to report this incident to the Computer Emergency Response Team of India (CERT-In) even though they are required by law to do so.^[2] Such risks are increasingly faced by consumers, businesses, and governments. A person who is a victim of a cyber incident usually looks to receive assistance from the service provider and government agencies, which are prepared to investigate the incident, mitigate its consequences, and help prevent future incidents. It is essential for an effective response to cyber incidents that authorities have as much knowledge regarding the incident as possible and have that knowledge as soon as possible. It is also critical that this information is communicated to the public. This underlines the importance of reporting cyber incidents as a tool in making the internet and digital infrastructure secure.. Like any other crime, an Internet-based crime should be reported to those law enforcement authorities assigned to tackle it at a local, state, national, or international level, depending on the nature and scope of the criminal act. This is the first in a series of blog posts highlighting the importance of incident reporting in the Indian regulatory context with a view to highlight the Indian regulations dealing with incident reporting and the ultimate objective of having a more robust incident reporting environment in India.

Incident Reporting under CERT Rules

In India, section 70-B of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (the “IT Act”) gives the Central Government the power to appoint an agency of the government to be called the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team. In pursuance of the said provision the Central Government issued the Information Technology (The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team and Manner of Performing Functions and Duties) Rules, 2013 (the “CERT Rules”) which provide the location and manner of functioning of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In). Rule 12 of the CERT Rules gives every person, company or organisation the option to report cyber security incidents to the CERT-In. It also places an obligation on them to mandatorily report the following kinds of incidents as early as possible:

Targeted scanning/probing of critical networks/systems;
Compromise of critical systems/information;
Unauthorized access of IT systems/data;
Defacement of website or intrusion into a website and unauthorized changes such as inserting malicious code, links to external websites, etc.;
Malicious code attacks such as spreading of virus/worm/Trojan/botnets/spyware;
Attacks on servers such as database, mail, and DNS and network devices such as routers;
Identity theft, spoofing and phishing attacks;
Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks;
Attacks on critical infrastructure, SCADA systems and wireless networks;
Attacks on applications such as e-governance, e-commerce, etc.

The CERT Rules also impose an obligation on service providers, intermediaries, data centres and body corporates to report cyber incidents within a reasonable time so that CERT-In may have scope for timely action. This mandatory obligation of reporting incidents casts a fairly wide net in terms of private sector entities, however it is notable that prima facie the provision does not impose any obligation on government entities to report cyber incidents unless they come under any of the expressions “service providers”, “data centres”, “intermediaries” or “body corporate”. This would mean that if the data kept with the Registrar General & Census Commissioner of India is hacked in a cyber incident, then there is no statutory obligation under the CERT Rules on it to report the incident. It is pertinent to mention here that although there is no obligation on a government department under law to report such an incident, such an obligation may be contained in its internal rules and guidelines, etc. which are not readily available.

It is pertinent to note that although the CERT Rules provide for a mandatory obligation to report the cyber incidents listed therein, the Rules themselves do not provide for any penalty for non compliance. However this does not mean that there are no consequences for non compliance, it just means that we have to look to the parent legislation i.e. the IT Act for the appropriate penalties for non compliance. Section 70B(6) gives the CERT-In the power to call for information and give directions for the purpose of carrying out its functions. Section 70B(7) provides that any service provider, intermediary, data center, body corporate or person who fails to provide the information called for or comply with the direction under sub-section (6), shall be liable to imprisonment for a period up to 1 (one) year or fine of up to 1 (one) lakh or both.

It is possible to argue here that sub-section (6) only talks about calls for information by CERT-In and the obligation under Rule 12 of the CERT Rules is an obligation placed by the central government and not CERT-In. It can also be argued that sub-section (6) is only meant for specific requests made by CERT-In for information and sub-section (7) only penalises those who do not respond to these specific requests. However, even if these arguments were to be accepted and we were to conclude that a violation of the obligation imposed under Rule 12 would not attract the penalty stipulated under sub-section (7) of section 70B, that does not mean that Rule 12 would be left toothless. Section 44(b) of the IT Act provides that where any person is required under any of the Rules or Regulations under the IT Act to furnish any information within a particular time and such person fails to do so, s/he may be liable to pay a penalty of upto Rs. 5,000/- for every day such failure continues. Further section 45 provides for a further penalty of Rs.25,000/- for any contravention of any of the rules or regulations under the Act for which no other penalty has been provided.

Incident Reporting under Intermediary Guidelines

Section 2(1)(w) of the IT Act defined the term “intermediary” in the following manner;

“intermediary” with respect to any particular electronic record, means any person who on behalf of another person receives, stores or transmits that record or provides any service with respect to that record and includes telecom service providers, network service providers, internet service providers, web hosting service providers, search engines, online payment sites, online-auction sites, online market places and cyber cafes.

Rule 3(9) of the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011 (the “Intermediary Guidelines”) also imposes an obligation on any intermediary to report any cyber incident and share information related to cyber security incidents with the CERT-In. Since neither the Intermediary Guidelines not the IT Act specifically provide for any penalty for non conformity with Rule 3(9) therefore any enforcement action against an intermediary failing to report a cyber security incident would have to be taken under section 45 of the IT Act containing a penalty of Rs. 25,000/-.

Incident Reporting under the Unified License

Clause 39.10(i) of the Unified License Agreement obliges the telecom company to create facilities for the monitoring of all intrusions, attacks and frauds on its technical facilities and provide reports on the same to the Department of Telecom (DoT). Further clause 39.11(ii) provides that for any breach or inadequate compliance with the terms of the license, the telecom company shall be liable to pay a penalty amount of Rs. 50 crores (Rs. 50,00,00,000) per breach.

Conclusion

It is clear from the above discussion that there is a legal obligation service providers to report cyber incidents to the CERT-In. Presently, the penalty prescribed under Indian law may not be enough to incentivise companies to adopt comprehensive and consistent incident response programmes. , except in cases of telecom companies under the Unified License Agreement. A fine of Rs. 25,000/- appears to be inconsequential when compared to the possible dangers and damages that may be caused due to a security breach of data containing, for example, credit card details.. Further, it is also imperative that apart from the obligation to report the cyber incident to the appropriate authorities (CERT-In) there should also be a legal obligation to report it to the data subjects whose data is stolen or is put at risk due to the said breach. A provision requiring notice to the data subjects could go a long way in ensuring that service providers, intermediaries, data centres and body corporates implement the best data security practices since a breach would then be known by general consumers leading to a flurry of bad publicity which could negatively impact the business of the data controller, and for a business entity an economic stimulus may be an effective way to ensure compliance.

As we continue to research incident response, the questions and areas we are exploring include the ecosystem of incidence response including what is reported, how, and when, appropriate incentives to companies and governments to report incidents, various forms of penalties, the role of cross border sharing of information and jurisdiction and best practices for incident reporting and citizen awareness.

Published under Creative Commons License CC BY-SA. Anyone can distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon this document, even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit the creator of this document and license their new creations under the terms identical to the license governing this document

^[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2016/10/21/atm-card-hack-what-banks-are-saying-about-india-s-biggest-data/

^[2] http://tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/internet/cert-in-had-warned-banks-on-oct-7-about-expected-targeted-attacks-from-pakistan/54991025

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/incident-response-requirements-in-indian-law

Workshop on Center for IT and Society

praskrishna — 2016-12-23T14:05:00Z

This workshop was held at IIT, Delhi on December 20, 2016. Amber Sinha attended the workshop. The meeting focused on the curriculum and the way forward, especially with respect to the industry requirements.

Session 1 (11:00 - 13:00*): Quick recap of the earlier workshop. Description and focus area of the center. Feedback about the interdisciplinary program in IT and Social Sciences.
Session 2 (14:00 - 16:00)*: Discussion on industry requirement and absorption criterion.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/workshop-on-center-for-it-and-society

How private companies are using Aadhaar to try to deliver better services (but there's a catch)

praskrishna — 2016-12-23T02:04:59Z

They are gathering more information on you.

The article by M. Rajshekhar was published in Scroll.in on December 22, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

In 2006, Ajay Trehan set up AuthBridge, a background verification company in Gurgaon. That was a time when business process outsourcing was booming. Global companies like Citibank were relocating back-office functions to India. Outfits like AuthBridge sprang up in response to help these companies find qualified staffers. They vetted applicants by running identity checks, verifying education and employment records, doing reference checks and more.

Ten years later, AuthBridge’s client profile has changed. With rising insecurity over crimes in India’s cities, like the December 2012 gangrape in Delhi, or the rape of a young woman in an Uber taxi in 2014, local companies – sizeably from e-commerce and businesses with delivery services – have also started vetting employees and partners to check if they have any criminal history. “Now, we have about 700-800 clients,” said Trehan. “Of them, just 20%-30% are foreign companies.”

AuthBridge’s verification process has changed too. Earlier, its employees used to physically verify the credentials of an applicant by travelling to her school or college, meeting her previous employer, vetting her identity papers with the government department that issued them, and so on.

Now they simply run a query on an electronic database.

Aadhaar enters the private sector

Aadhaar, as India’s Unique Identity Project is called, aims to give a 12-digit unique identity number to all residents by collecting their fingerprint and iris scans. As of September, its database, maintained by the Unique Identity Authority of India, held the names, addresses and biometric information of more than 105 crore people.

The project was created by the United Progressive Alliance government in 2009 to reduce leakages in the country’s welfare programmes.

But, quietly, a range of private sector companies have started using it. This includes verification firms like Authbridge, banks like HDFC, telecommunications companies like Reliance Jio, among others.

So far, most discussions on Aadhaar have focused on its utility for welfare delivery and the risk of government surveillance. But as private sector companies incorporate Aadhaar into their systems, fresh questions and concerns are emerging about what this means. A recent tweet by a journalist that went viral encapsulated these concerns.

To understand the rewards and risks of the use of Aadhaar by private companies, here is a detailed look at how they are using it.

Five ways of using Aadhaar

The first way in which companies are using Aadhaar is pure authentication. This is how Authbridge uses Aadhaar. It sends a name and Aadhaar number to the Unique Identity Authority’s server, which responds to say whether they have matched.

Apart from background verification companies, Aadhaar-based authentication can also be used by employers. “A factory hiring women or a security agency hiring guards and wanting to be sure these people are who they claim to be,” said Pramod Varma, the chief architect and technology advisor for the Aadhaar project.

It could also be used by regulated entities with strong Know Your Customer or KYC norms like banks or telecommunications companies. In the old days of branch-based banking, KYC was not a problem, said Varma, since “the bank manager knew all his customers”. But now, KYC is much harder since banks have moved to “core banking with millions of accounts in the server”. Instant Aadhaar-authentication, he said, is useful for verifying customers.

The second is authentication plus. Here, at the time of authentication, a company also downloads the customer’s data from the Aadhaar database. This is what companies like Reliance Jio are doing.

When a customer provides his Aadhaar number to the company, the company not only runs a query on the Aadhaar database to verify the name and number, it also downloads other information about the customer held on the server, like address, date of birth and gender.

This data can be used to electronically fill out the Know Your Customer forms, replacing what is right now a manual process, said Anupam Varghese, the head (products) of Eko India Financial Services, a financial services startup in the phone banking and remittances segment.

It is a disruptive proposition that companies find useful. In India, the cost of enrolling customers is so high, said Abhishek Sinha, the founder of Eko, that it prices a set of financial products beyond the reach of most Indians. “Authenticating a credit card customer and vetting her identity papers will cost anywhere between Rs 150-Rs 200,” he said. A company can recover that investment only if the customer racks up at least Rs 10,000 on the card, assuming a 2% margin on card transactions.

With its instant authentication and automatic form filling, Aadhaar-based electronic Know Your Customer, said Sinha, slashes those costs and makes it easier for companies to offer financial products which become viable even with a smaller volume of transactions. This allows the growth of financial products for less affluent customer segments.

Subsequently, these companies might pad up those databases by adding their own data. This is a third model of using Aadhaar: authentication plus private database.

For instance, TrustID, a mobile app which claims it can verify “your maid, driver, electrician, tutor, tenant and all service professionals” using Aadhaar, wants users to rate the services of the people they eventually employ. In effect, it is creating a private database.

Others, like Eko, are adding financial transaction histories to the Aadhaar data.

While these three uses are built around Aadhaar-based authentication, the remaining three uses – database sharing, data broking, deduplication – pivot around use of just the Aadhaar number. They are based on recent changes in how companies use customer data.

The customer data boom

Customer data has acquired centrality for several Indian companies, particularly startups in e-commerce and financial services.

In some sectors, Varma said, “the cost of switching [between rival companies] is very low,” which heightens the need for customisation. “The better you can serve, they more sticky you get for a customer.” In other sectors, said Varghese, competition chips away at margins. Which is another reason to try and come up with better services and products.

This is where data can help.

In a conversation in October, Nandan Nilekani, software entrepreneur and the first chairperson of the Unique Identity Authority of India, explained why. “Companies like Ola compete with global companies like Uber which have a tremendous advantage in that they have more data – more customers globally – and better algorithms,” he said. If Ola has 5 million customers, Uber has 100 million. Which means Uber’s algorithms – thanks to pattern recognition and machine learning – will be more accurate.

For all these reasons, said Varma, companies in a handful of business verticals are trying to create “a 360 degree view of their customer”.

What has enabled this is a couple of technological trends. The ability to store and process data, said Nilekani, has gone up enormously in the last 15 years. At the same time, data itself has proliferated as electronic devices like mobile phones create records of voice, photos, messages and the locations of customers.

“All this is realtime data. So, on scale, speed and frequency, we have seen a jump,” said Nilekani.

This rising appetite for data is resulting in a couple of novel outcomes.

Enter, the sharing of customer data

Indian companies have begun sharing databases.

A good example is an experimental partnership between Eko, the banking and remittances company, and Capital Float, a financial services startup which gives short term loans.

The two companies worked out an arrangement where Eko shared a part of its database about its distributors with Capital Float. This shared information contained aggregated and anonymised information on distributors and their working capital positions, said Varghese. Capital Float evaluated the database and came back with a list of distributors it could lend to. Eko, then, forwarded these offers to the distributors. After taking their consent, data about the distributors who were interested in the loans was shared with Capital Float.

On the surface, this is a counter-intuitive development: if customer data holds the key to competitive advantage, companies should closely safeguard their data.

But as it turns out, there are strong reasons to share data.

Both Eko and Capital Float, for instance, are small, specialised players in the financial services market which is dominated by banks. Data sharing is one way to compete with banks by offering complementary services to customers.

It is not clear how endemic data-sharing will get. According to Varma, it will be used selectively. “I cannot see organisations sharing databases at will,” he said. “They will be shared only if they can be used to offer an additional service to the client.”

But a programmer who works at iSpirt, a product software evangelising association based in Bangalore, and who did not want to be identified, said the trend will grow. In the financial sector, as new players like mobile wallet companies acquire more customers, banks that refuse to share data will miss out on emergent markets, he said. “Keeping everything behind closed doors – not participating in data exchanges – is now harmful,” he said.

Sunil Abraham, who heads the Centre For Internet and Society, foresees the rise of another kind of data-sharing – by companies that aggregate customer data from multiple sources and market that to clients. These could be data brokers like US-based Acziom, he said. These could also be more specialised firms like medical transcription companies, which simultaneously serve hospitals, insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

The question is: what does all this have to do with Aadhaar?

The utility of Aadhaar

Aadhaar makes it easier to compare and combine diverse databases.

This is what India’s microfinance companies are doing. As Scroll.in reported recently, Microfinance Institutions Network, an association of microlenders, has told its member companies to seed the Aadhaar numbers of their borrowers into their databases. By searching the databases for the Aadhaar number of a prospective borrower, it will be possible to identify if she has already taken too many loans.

This is a scenario Nilekani bristles at. “You do not need Aadhaar for that,” he said. “You can triangulate databases using email or phone number or name.”

But the iSpirt programmer said, “With Aadhaar, the level of certainty is higher than what you would get by using name, phone number or email.” Between databases, the spelling of names might vary. Phone numbers change, especially in a country like India where prepaid mobile connections outnumber postpaid connections. Only a small part of the country’s population uses email. With Aadhaar, said the programmer, it gets easier to correlate databases.

Aadhaar, added Varma, can also be used to clean up databases. Banks, he said, can use the Aadhaar number to create better customer profiles by identifying all accounts owned by a person. This is the fifth use – deduplication.

What it all means

The implications are obvious. A lot of companies already had databases about their customers. Now, as Nilekani said, technology is allowing the collection of ever greater amounts of information about us. The sharing of databases means companies will have ever more detailed customer profiles.

In a sense, we are entering a future where multiple databases – including several that we are not even aware of – will contain information about us. A hospital and an insurance company might share their records. Or intermediary companies, which service both of them, might create their own databases.

This information will materially affect our lives. As already happens online, companies will increasingly base their products on algorithms that parse data about our behaviour and then offer a customised price – which could be geared to serve or exploit us.

These algorithms, as Propublica reported, can be opaque.

In a sense, much of this is a familiar trajectory. The United States too, as the iSpirt programmer said, “saw a lot of irresponsible data sharing without enough control for civilians”.

That is where India is heading as well. As Scroll noted in its article about TrustID, when the company creates scores for the workers who use its app, they might not always be aware of that rating – or be in a position to challenge that rating.

There are large questions here. Who owns the data about you in a company’s database? Take your information in, say, Ola’s database – the address from where you get picked up or dropped, the phone number, the places you visit most often. Is the data owned by you, Ola or the driver? Should you have a say if a company wants to share this data? If you grant permission, how does one ensure it is used correctly?

Right now, as the next story in this series will show, this is a poorly regulated landscape.

This is the third part in a series on the expansion of Aadhaar and the concerns around it. The first two parts can be read here.

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/scroll-m-rajshekhar-how-private-companies-are-using-aadhaar-to-deliver-better-services-but-theres-a-catch

The EU and Free Flows of Data - Data Protection, Trade and Law Enforcement

praskrishna — 2016-12-22T16:01:52Z

Amelia Andersdotter, Cofounder of Dataskydd.net, Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society and former Member of the European Parliament gave a talk on December 14, 2016 at the Department of European Studies in Manipal.

Download the brochure

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-eu-and-free-flows-of-data-data-protection-trade-and-law-enforcement

With power, phone and internet services affected, Chennai is still recovering from Cyclone Vardah

praskrishna — 2016-12-20T16:50:27Z

Nearly a week after Cyclone Vardah rattled the city, bringing normal life to a halt for a few days, Chennai is still reeling from the aftershock of the powerful storm.

The blog post by Vinita Govindarajan and Sruthisagar Yamunan was published by Scroll.in on December 20, 2016 quoted Udbhav Tiwari

With powerful winds that blew up to the speed of 120 kmph, around one lakh trees were estimated to have have been uprooted across the city by the cyclone, causing a loss of almost one-fourth of the city’s foliage, reported The Hindu. Many of these trees fell on transmission lines, damaging them severely and cutting power supply to scores of residential areas.

Employees of Chennai’s city corporation and electricity board were seen hard at work throughout the week, clearing the streets of fallen trees and repairing electricity lines. But with frequent power cuts and sporadic phone and internet signals, the city is still on the long route to restoration.

A senior official of the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board said that their personnel have been working every hour to ensure that normalcy returns to the city as soon as possible. “We have restored power to over 80% of Chennai,” he said. “The rest is also get intermittent power. By Monday morning, the whole city would be covered.”

Slow business

For Senthil Kumar, who runs a tiffin business in East Tambaram in South Chennai, there was no power from Monday, when the cyclone stuck, till Saturday morning. “For three days after the cyclone, we couldn’t open our shop,” he said. “On Friday, we decided to get the food prepared outside and bring it here. We served dosas and idlis without chutney and only sambhar. We’ve lost a week’s business. But you can’t blame the government. They have done well to restore everything so quickly.”

Local businesses depending on internet and phone lines to receive orders were also deeply affected. Moremilaga, a hyperlocal startup that delivers homemade food to customers across the city, said that even though they did not receive their usual number of orders over phone and internet, they managed to surprise their regular customers with packets of food.

“Many of the people who we give food to are elderly people,” said Ragini Murali, who is in-charge of the start-up’s operations. “We felt really bad that we could not give them food for a day because they cannot cook on their own or buy from a store. They depend on our food and were very relieved when we delivered food even when they could not reach us.”

Business is slowly coming back to normal except that now Moremilaga is receiving only 20% of its orders through internet, whereas earlier it was 50%, said Viji Ganesh, the founder of the enterprise.

Maligai Kadai, an online grocery delivery business in Chennai, was shut from Monday through Wednesday. Satish Sundaram, founder of Maligai Kadai, said that the online store hardly received any orders this week because of internet problems across the city. But he said that even delivery of orders placed prior to the storm was a problem.

“We couldn’t do anything,” said Sundaram. “We had to postpone the delivery of orders placed on Sunday because many of our customers left the city immediately after the storm. In other cases, we could not reach our customers on phone to find out if their area was accessible. If the roads were blocked with fallen trees, we would have to come back all the way.”

Why no internet?

Five days after the storm, communication signals were still erratic. Airtel subscribers across the country received messages that the cyclone in Chennai had affected one of their undersea network cables which in turn might slow down internet speeds. Subscribers to BSNL, Vodafone and other telecommunication operators were also facing similar difficulties.

The reason for this slow speed, explained Udbhav Tiwari, a policy officer at The Centre for Internet and Society, was that operators were having to reroute their traffic to other undersea cables that travel using longer, convoluted routes.

“The data takes long to travel, since it does not travel efficiently enough,” he said. “So if you search for something on the internet, it will open only after a minute because the packet had to travel the other three-fourth of the world to reach you instead of the shortest route.”

Undersea cables, Tiwari explained, are usually owned by a combination of telecom companies as well as companies whose sole job is to lay these cables and rent them to individuals who will run their traffic through them.

These companies map out a route decided by demand between certain key points, hire a ship that trawls the ocean sea floor and lays and maintains cables, he said.

For the entirety of Asia, the Singaporean and Japanese region are the main hubs for internet exchange, Tiwari said, since they are considered reliable and commercially viable.

“Undersea cables almost always end in big cites,“ Tiwari said, “because of the infrastructure required to operate them. On the eastern side of India, Chennai is one of the best places to set up an end point for an undersea cable since it is a metropolitan city and closer to hubs like Japan and Singapore.”

If one of these lines near Chennai are broken, he said, it is very likely that the data would slow down because they have to find alternative routes.

“A severe cyclone or tsunami definitely has the potential to disturb or snap these sea cables,” Tiwari said. “But if maintenance is not carried out on them regularly enough, they can break for far more mundane reasons such as high water pressure, rust, debris falling from other ships or even sea animals.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/scroll-in-vinita-govindarajan-shrutisagar-yamunan-with-power-phone-and-internet-services-affected-chennai-is-still-recovering-from-cyclone-vardah

"Decoding the Digital"- Winter School at IIIT Bangalore

praskrishna — 2016-12-17T01:39:20Z

The Centre for IT and Public Policy at IIIT Bangalore organized a winter school from December 12 to 14, 2016 at the IIIT campus on Decoding the Digital, where the theme for the same was Smart Cities and Social Media. Vanya Rakesh participated in it.

The event involved lectures, interactive discussions, film screenings and group activities on topics ranging from smart communities, smart phones, intelligent transportation, big data, privacy, surveillance, etc. For more inflo, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/decoding-the-digital-winter-school-at-iiit-bangalore

Multistakeholder Consultation on Encryption

praskrishna — 2016-12-17T01:22:35Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) in collaboration with ORF and Takshashila Institution is organizing a Multi-Stakeholder Consultation on Encryption on December 17, 2016 at TERI in Bengaluru.

The consultation is intended to help shape the discussions around the new draft encryption policy slated to be released sometime early next year. The consultation will be divided into two segments: an open house and a panel discussion with high-level government representatives, including Dr. Gulshan Rai, the National Cyber Security Coordinator. The sessions start at 10.30 a.m. on December 17, 2016 and will go on for until approximately 4.30 p.m.

The discussions themselves will highlight inputs from the three main constituents affected by an encryption policy: civil society and end users, the private sector and government. The range of civil liberties and constitutional rights implicated by encryption, as well as the needs of businesses to secure data flows will be discussed. Government officials too are expected to join the consultation and will provide perspectives on encryption and legitimate access to data for law enforcement purpose.

For more info reach out to Udbhav Tiwari (udbhav@cisindia.org) or Bedavyasa Mohanty (bedavyasam@orfonline.org)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/multistakeholder-consultation-on-encryption

11th DSCI-NASSCOM Annual Information Security Summit 2016

praskrishna — 2016-12-17T01:14:15Z

Udbhav Tiwari participated as a panelist in the 11th DSCI-NASSSCOM Annual Information Security Summit 2016 in New Delhi on December 14, 2016. The event was organized by DSCI and NASSCOM.

The Panel was on "Designing Privacy in Data Centric Business Architectures - Designing Privacy in Product, Services & Operations". Udbhav's co-panelists were: Gowree Gokhle, Partner, Nishith Desai Associates - Moderator; Sachin Lodha, Principal Scientist, TCS Innovation Labs; and Ankur Jain, Director IT & CISO, PayU.

The discussion primarily focused on:

Core Principles - Privacy should not solely be governed by laws, regulations and industry codes but should instead be guided by a core set of principles that companies choose to follow uniformly across their international presence. In fact, laws and regulations should form a basic, minimum standard of requirements and actual practice should attempt to follow these principles to ensure true compliance to the ideals of privacy. These core, minimal principles are: Notice, Transparency, Accountability, Security and Use Limitation.
Privacy as an Incentive - Privacy should be looked at not as a isolated right or legal compliance but an inclusive outlook which can be economically beneficial to both consumer and enterprise facing companies. Customers are increasingly starting to value privacy and providing it in an transparent manner (along with ensuring sufficient modern technical infrastructure) to ensure reliable protection can distinguish business in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
Sound Technological Bedrock - Privacy as a notion in data (and now big data) centric architectures can only be enforced with modern, secure and open technological processes that ensure policy compliance and provide a clear audit trail for any breaches. Measures such as Homomorphic encryption, Multi-party computation, K-anonymity and Identity Management systems must be explored, tested and implemented according to need and requirements of businesses to ensure adequate privacy protection.
Need for a clear Indian legal framework - India's current legal framework with regard to privacy ranges from scattered to non existent, so there is a strong need for their to be a strong, clear and uniform legal framework to govern privacy for both Indian citizens as well as interactions with data from other jurisdictions. This will ensure that organisations will have a clear standard to follow, will have an easier time implementing privacy policies avoid sectoral clashes and can be held accountable for any breaches of legal standards. A large part of the work required for this has been done by the Justice AP Shah Committee on Privacy as well.

For more info see this page

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/dsci-nasscom-annual-information-security-summit-2016

Myanmar Digital Rights Forum

praskrishna — 2016-12-17T00:44:25Z

Sunil Abraham was a speaker at the Myanmar Digital Rights Forum in Myanmar on December 14 and 15, 2016. The two day event was organized by Phandeeyar, You Can Do IT, Engage Media and Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business with support form the Embassy of Sweden.

More than 55 representatives from technology companies, government, media and civil society organizations gathered at the innovation lab Phandeeyar to participate in the Myanmar Digital Rights Forum. The event was organized to address critical digital rights challenges in Myanmar. Participants discussed the issues raised by the increasing access, in recent years, of large numbers of Myanmar citizens to the internet, social media and mobile phones. For more info see here.

Click to read the agenda

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/myanmar-digital-rights-forum

The Curious Case of Poor Security in the Indian Twitterverse

udbhav — 2016-12-17T00:28:05Z

What are the technical, legal and jurisdictional issues around the recent Twitter and email hacks claimed by the ‘Legion Crew’, and what can targeted entities do to better protect themselves?

The article was originally published in the Wire on December 15, 2016.

The term legion, an oft-referred identity in popular culture, has begun to attain recent notoriety in Indian cyberspace due to the spate of hacks being carried out by a group of hackers calling themselves ‘Legion Crew’. The group has compromised four Twitter and/or email accounts in the past two weeks, with confirmed hacks of Rahul Gandhi, Vijay Mallya, Barkha Dutt and Ravish Kumar. Lalit Modi, Apollo Hospitals and the parliament (sansad) have been singled out as future targets, with dire warnings of catastrophic data leaks if the group were to be investigated by the authorities. The ethical impression of the hacks have been divided, with some segments of the public supporting the supposedly hacktivist outlook of the group while others condemning their actions as reckless and invasive. In the meantime, no individuals or entities have been accused of the hacks by the police, with most reports claiming the foreign origin of the hacks being the biggest impediment to the investigations.

A technical and legal perspective

The hacks first began against the politician Gandhi, whose Twitter account was hacked almost two weeks ago, with various demeaning tweets being posted for a few hours before access to the account was restored to the rightful owner. The same hacks were then carried out on business tycoon Mallya’s Twitter account last Friday but this time around, his bank details (apparently obtained from his compromised email accounts) were also leaked to the public via Twitter. Similar hacks targeting both the Twitter and email accounts of Dutt and Kumar were also carried out the past weekend. Sensitive details and data dumps (around 1.5 GB in size) of the journalists were released to the public, along with escalating warnings about future attacks. The data dumps released by the hackers seemed to be indicative that the hackers obtained far more information than they had disclosed via the Twitter hacks and were willing to leverage this data as ransom. Twitter, via both their Indian policy representatives and their international office, has denied any compromise to their systems and has claimed that all accounts were legitimately accessed with valid credentials at the time of the hacks. This leads to three main questions: How were the Twitter and email accounts hacked? What is the recourse, especially in terms of investigation, available to the afflicted parties and the authorities? What can potential targets do to secure their online presence from such attacks?

Regarding their technical nature, all of these hacks were sustained compromises that lasted for a few hours each (a long time in cyberspace) and seemed to be reflective of only a fragment of the power the hackers held over the individual’s online presence. Considering Twitter’s denial that the attacks were due to a security flaw on their end as well as the fact that legitimate login details were used to gain access to the accounts, a rather simple investigation can show that the most likely attack vector used by the Legion Crew for these hacks was a DNS Hijacking attack in combination with a Man in the Middle (MITM) attack. These methods abuse the rather simple and (by default) insecure DNS system that is responsible for directing the world’s Internet traffic including email. While the use of DNS to map websites to the IP address of the systems where they are physically hosted (for instance, www.thewire.in maps to 52.76.81.135 at the time of writing this article) is fairly well known, the DNS system also directs most of the world’s email. Similar to DNS A and AAA name records regarding websites, DNS MX records direct email sent to domain names to the correct email servers where they are processed for storage or forwarding, as required. If these MX records are compromised, then hackers can easily redirect emails sent to legitimate email address of the domain name (for instance, xyz@thewire.in) to whatever system they want, including other compromised email addresses.

The original operator of the email account is unaware of any email that is redirected in such a way and has no way of knowing the account has been hacked until they notice they are not consistently receiving emails sent to them, which in well planned hacks can be as for many weeks or even months. These attacks can also be further augmented if the hackers also decide to implement an MITM. In an MITM attack, hackers can redirect all traffic attempting to reach an email account via the MX records to a system they operate by changing the MX records on the domain name server to a malicious system. They can access and store all these emails (along with attachments) via the malicious system and also manipulate the information contained in these emails. Then, either in bulk or selectively, they can re-send the emails to the original email accounts they were intended for from their own servers. The owner will then receive the emails in their inboxes with the apparent impression they are private and being received for the first time. This entire MITM process can be setup in a manner that the emails are rerouted to compromised servers by MX records changes, stored for future analysis and then forwarded to the original recipient account in a matter of seconds.

Given the reliance placed by most websites on email IDs being a primary form of identity authentication, compromising an email ID can give access to most of the social networking, entertainment and even banking websites’ login details of the owner to any individual who has the login details of the account. This is because of the password reset or forgotten password feature available in most services that use only email IDs by default as a form of authenticating account ownership and allowing the user to reset their passwords by setting a reset email to their registered email accounts. Once they gain access to the compromised accounts, hackers can perform these resets with impunity, granting them unrestricted access to the online presence of the owner. In fact, hackers can use these attacks to perform password resets on the email accounts themselves, allowing them unlimited access to past conversation, records and login details that may be stored in the email accounts.

Keeping this background in mind, the most likely methodology behind the hacks is quite simple to explain. The Legion Crew most likely first compromised the email systems of these celebrities by changing the DNS MX records of the email IDs which were registered with Twitter as login IDs for these accounts. This allowed them to redirect emails sent to these email IDs to an alternative system of their choosing. They then used the password reset feature of Twitter, which is similar to those provided by most social networking services, to reset the password of these accounts. However, due to the compromise of the MX records of the domain names used by these celebrities, instead of reaching the inboxes of the entities operating the accounts, the password reset emails were sent to the alternative systems set up by the hackers solely for receiving such emails. After receiving this email, it was a simple matter of resetting the account credentials by clicking on the password reset link on the email and changing the passwords of these accounts to unique passwords only known to the hackers.

The hackers then would (and did) have complete control of the account until the service provider itself intervened and provided an emergency reset along with recommending rectifying the MX records from the malicious one’s inserted by the hackers. The only question left to be answered in the methodology followed by the hackers is how they gained access to the MX records, as DNS records can only be changed using the dashboard of the domain name provider, which in turn is protected by a login password. Allegations have arisen that most (if not all) of the compromised accounts used ‘Net4india’ as their domain name provider. Therefore, it is very possible either that it is a vulnerability on the Net4india systems, an internal compromise of the personnel Net4india and so on leading to access detail to domain name accounts from being compromised. Such security and personnel breaches could have been responsible for providing access to the domain name management dashboard of the hacked celebrities email IDs, after which the attack would have followed the methodology described above by changing the MX records to a malicious system.

Jurisdictional issues

The legal avenues available to the affected parties are fairly clear within the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Indian Penal Code, 1862. Section 66 and Section 66C of the IT Act, which govern hacking and misuse of passwords respectively, would apply along with possible application of the provisions concerning mischief (Section 425), cheating (Section 420) and extortion (Section 383) of the IPC. However, recent investigations have already begun to show that the various jurisdictional symptoms that plague cybercrimes investigations are also hindering investigations for these hacks. The global nature of the internet ensures that the operating servers, attackers, compromised users and unwitting intermediaries are more often than not all located in different jurisdictions, each with their own set of protections, vulnerabilities and laws. For example, investigations by the Delhi police into IP addresses that accessed Gandhi’s Twitter account during the hack have shown that in the period of few hours the account was accessed from the US, Sweden, Canada, Thailand and Romania. Of course, given the pervasive availability of IP spoofing tools, none of these countries is indicative of the actual location of the hacker. Gaining information from these different servers, in order to trace a route of the hacker’s digital geographical journey, is a bureaucratic and legal nightmare with long delays, unanswered Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty requests and unresponsive service providers being the norm. Like in most cybercrime investigation, if the hackers take certain basic steps to mask their identities and geographical location, their odds being caught by traditional law enforcement are negligible. Investigations that have successfully managed to catch such hacker groups, such as the Project Safe Childhood by the FBI against child pornography on the Tor web, take millions of dollars, months of efforts and a high level of skill. Whether these Twitter hacks will generate the sustained, multijurisdictional effort across law enforcement agencies in India required to catch such crimes remains to be seen. Until then, the questions of attribution, liability and justice will remain unanswered like in a majority of large scale cyber hacks.

Possible measures

Given that various other targets have already been singled out by the hacker group, the need for vigilance and improved security is greater than ever. One basic measure, easily available within Twitter and most other services, that should be carried out is enabling two factor authentication (2FA) on both email and social media accounts. 2FA ensures that the user has to input a One Time Password (OTP) generated on a separate device (such as a mobile phone) at the time of logging in or resetting the password for the account. This would mean that even if the hackers obtain the password or compromise the emails being sent to an account, they will be unable to login into an account without also being in physical possession of the device with the OTP generation application. If this option, which is already available within Twitter, was enabled for the four accounts that were hacked, for example, they would have remained protected despite the email account compromise. Further, domain name service providers should also implement Domain Name System Security Extensions and Domain Keys Identified Mail to prevent DNS and email hijacking, as was carried out on Net4India servers in these Twitter attacks. Using HTTPS on all pages on websites will also go a long way in preventing spoofing and securing user information in transit. Finally, nothing can replace customer education and awareness as the most effective tool to combat the growing cyber threats faced by the average netizen. The weakest link in a digital system is often the end user. A core set of security measures that can be percolated into common practice will serve as the first and best line of defence against such attacks in the future, for both the common man and celebrities alike.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-wire-udbhav-tiwari-december-15-2016-curious-case-of-poor-security-in-indian-twitterverse

Inputs to the Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation on Public Policy Issues Pertaining to the Internet (WGEC)

Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda, with inputs from Pranesh Prakash — 2016-12-17T00:20:56Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) submitted inputs to the Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation on Public Policy Issues Pertaining to the Internet (WGEC) on 15 December 2016. The WGEC sought inputs on two questions that will guide the next meeting of the Working Group which is scheduled to take place on the 26-27 January 2017.

What are the high level characteristics of enhanced cooperation?

The Tunis Agenda leaves the term “enhanced cooperation” unclearly defined. What is clear, however, is that enhanced cooperation is distinct from the Internet Governance Forum.
According to Paragraph 69 of the Tunis Agenda, enhanced cooperation will enable "governments, on an equal footing, to carry out their roles and responsibilities, in international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet, but not in the day-to-day technical and operational matters, that do not impact on international public policy issues." In other words enhanced cooperation should result in in the development and enforcement of international public policy and only "day-to-day technical and operational matters" with no public policy impact and national public policy is exempt from government-to-government enhanced cooperation.
According to Paragraph 70, enhanced cooperation includes "development of globally-applicable principles on public policy issues associated with the coordination and management of critical Internet resources." According to the paragraph, “organizations responsible for essential tasks associated with the

Internet should create an environment that facilitates this development of these principles using "relevant international organizations". In other words, both Internet institutions [ICANN, ISOC and RIRs] and multilateral organisations [WIPO, ITU, UNESCO etc] should be used to develop principles.

Paragraph 71 gives some further clarity. According to this paragraph, the process for enhanced cooperation should 1) be “started by the UN Secretary General” 2) "involve all stakeholders in their respective roles" 3) "proceed as quickly as possible" 4) be "consistent with legal process" 5) "be responsive to innovation".
Again according to Paragraph 71, enhanced cooperation should be commenced by "relevant organisations" and should involve "all stakeholders". But only the "relevant organisations shall be requested to provide annual performance reports." Enhanced cooperation as envisioned in the Tunis Agenda, therefore, calls for a multistakeholder model where each constituency leads the process of developing principles and self-regulatory mechanisms that does involve all stakeholders at all stages, but rather, one that requires participation from relevant stakeholders in accordance with the issue at hand at the relevant stage.
For government-to-government enhanced cooperation, governments need to agree on what is within the exclusive realm of "national public policy" for ex. national security, intellectual property policy, and protection of children online. Governments also need to agree on what is within the remit of “international public policy” for ex. cross border taxation, cross border criminal investigations, cross border hate speech. Once this is done, the governments of the world should pursue the development and enforcement of international law and norms at the appropriate forums if they exist or alternatively they must create new forums that are appropriate.
For enhanced cooperation with respect to non-government "relevant organisations" [different sub-groups within the private sector, technical community and civil society], we believe that the requirements of Paragraph 71 can be understood to mean that enhanced cooperation is the “development of self regulatory norms” as a complement to traditional multilateral norm setting and international law making envisioned in Paragraph 69. In other words, the real utility of the multi-stakeholder model is self-regulation by the private sector. Besides the government, it is the private sector that has the greatest capacity for harm and therefore is in urgent need of regulation. The multistakeholder model will best serve its purpose if the end result is that the private sector self-regulates. Most of the harm emerging from large corporations can only be addressed if they agree amongst themselves. Having a centralised or homogenous model of enhanced cooperation will not suffice, the model of cooperation should be flexible in accordance with the issue being brought to the table.

Taking into consideration the work of the previous WGEC and the Tunis Agenda, particularly paragraphs 69-71, what kind of recommendations should we consider?

The previous work of the WGEC is useful as a mapping exercise. However, the working group was unable to agree on a definition of Enhanced Cooperation. In our previous response we have clearly indicated that enhanced cooperation is 1) development of international law and norms by governments at appropriate international/multilateral fora 2) articulation of principles by "organizations responsible for essential tasks associated with the Internet" and "relevant international organizations" and 3) development of self-regulatory norms and enforcement mechanisms by private sector, technical community and civil society with a priority for the private sector because they have the greatest potential after government for harms. To repeat, the Tunis Agenda makes it very clear that enhanced cooperation is distinct from the IGF. If the IGF is only the learning forum, we need a governance forum like ICANN so that different constituencies can develop self regulatory norms and enforcement mechanisms with inputs from other stakeholder constituencies and the public at large.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-inputs-to-the-working-group-on-enhanced-cooperation-on-public-policy-issues-pertaining-to-the-internet-wgec