Seeker of Truth
06-01-2003, 05:01 PM
Patriot Games On The Net
Srinivasa Prasad
Bangalore, May 31
He is called ‘Cobra’ and his strikes can be deadly. Hailing from a south Indian city, ‘Cobra’ cannot stand Pakistan. So he hacks into a Pakistani website and leaves a message there telling the Pakistanis what he thinks of them. Across the border, a computer whizkid who calls himself ‘Pak Brain’ is also intensely patriotic. He hates India and cracks into an Indian website, leaving behind a message saying Kashmir belonged to Pakistan.
They are two in the long line of computer hackers on either side of the border for whom patriotism means defacing an enemy website. They chart out plans to make each attack more telling than the other. In the world of cyber fights, groups are known to merge, disintegrate or they change their names.
This seems apparently harmless. Except that if a government-owned site has been hacked, there is loss of face. If a commercial site doing e-commerce is defaced, it could lose business because clients might consider the portal unsafe.
The Indo-Pak cyber war is about four years old now. Anubhav Kalia of Delhi whose flawfinder.com records hackings with help from global leaders in the field like zone-h.org says: “For each Pakistani site hacked, the Pakistanis hack about 10 Indian sites.”
Angry Indian cyberfighters thought it was time to teach their Pakistani counterparts a lesson and began plans for what they thought would be the ‘Big Kill’. ‘Cobra’ joined hands with ‘Roxx’, from another Indian city in cyber space, and formed a group called ‘Indian Snakes’ along with three other hackers. They programmed a virus which they called Yaha and began unleashing one deadly version of it after another on Pakistan from early this year. All hell broke loose in the enemy camp.
Like a guided missile seeks and destroys chosen targets, Yaha wormed its way into many Pakistani government websites, snatched the email IDs there, made its way into their address books and generated such a large number of artificial email messages that websites, networks and servers were choked for some weeks. It even immobilised the Karachi stock exchange for a while.
More @ hindustantimes.com (http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_268830,00030010.htm)
Srinivasa Prasad
Bangalore, May 31
He is called ‘Cobra’ and his strikes can be deadly. Hailing from a south Indian city, ‘Cobra’ cannot stand Pakistan. So he hacks into a Pakistani website and leaves a message there telling the Pakistanis what he thinks of them. Across the border, a computer whizkid who calls himself ‘Pak Brain’ is also intensely patriotic. He hates India and cracks into an Indian website, leaving behind a message saying Kashmir belonged to Pakistan.
They are two in the long line of computer hackers on either side of the border for whom patriotism means defacing an enemy website. They chart out plans to make each attack more telling than the other. In the world of cyber fights, groups are known to merge, disintegrate or they change their names.
This seems apparently harmless. Except that if a government-owned site has been hacked, there is loss of face. If a commercial site doing e-commerce is defaced, it could lose business because clients might consider the portal unsafe.
The Indo-Pak cyber war is about four years old now. Anubhav Kalia of Delhi whose flawfinder.com records hackings with help from global leaders in the field like zone-h.org says: “For each Pakistani site hacked, the Pakistanis hack about 10 Indian sites.”
Angry Indian cyberfighters thought it was time to teach their Pakistani counterparts a lesson and began plans for what they thought would be the ‘Big Kill’. ‘Cobra’ joined hands with ‘Roxx’, from another Indian city in cyber space, and formed a group called ‘Indian Snakes’ along with three other hackers. They programmed a virus which they called Yaha and began unleashing one deadly version of it after another on Pakistan from early this year. All hell broke loose in the enemy camp.
Like a guided missile seeks and destroys chosen targets, Yaha wormed its way into many Pakistani government websites, snatched the email IDs there, made its way into their address books and generated such a large number of artificial email messages that websites, networks and servers were choked for some weeks. It even immobilised the Karachi stock exchange for a while.
More @ hindustantimes.com (http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_268830,00030010.htm)