Hackers all out to tarnish politicians doing online campaigns

By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 26 March 2009, 18:08 IST   |    1 Comments
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Bangalore: As this year's election is witnessing an increased investment by political parties on World Wide Web, cyber criminals are finding it an opportunity to cash in on. In some cases, hackers even facilitate anti-campaigns to malign an opposition contestant by manipulating his website or replicating one with a vicious intent. Recently, the CPI(M) poll campaign website www.vote.cpim.org was hacked. But the problem was quickly rectified. In many cases, the spellings of names are tweaked to drive the online traffic towards the fake sites. It was reported that there are about 160 different ways to type in the wrong website for www.barackobama.com, and this was used to siphon off traffic from the official website for a variety of corrupt purposes. Amuleek Bijral, Country Manager for RSA, the security division of EMC, says, "The internet can act as a powerful and influential medium to tar a politicians reputation. One may even find fake fund raising sites collecting huge sums of money under the pretext of election campaigns." When Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan was killed in Mumbai terror attack, many fake websites popped up and emails were sent, asking for donations. Cyber security expert Vijay Mukhi says the condition in India is bad as the police are not trained to handle cyber crimes. "We will definitely see emails floating around asking for funds. People might not hesitate to donate Rs 200 to 300, but in the process the financial details might be given out. Websites might even be compromised to spread malware. Clicking links online can download and spread malware," he says. Symantec researchers found that malware distributors used U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as bait for a malicious file download. Users were sent spam emails that promised a video of Clinton speaking, only to be given a file that downloaded another Trojan application, infecting the user's system. "A presidential polling scam promised free gift cards and tshirts in exchange for opinions on the election. This attack was used to obtain personal information such as credit card details. The same idea can be applied to the election campaign in India," says Shantanu Ghosh, VP for Product Operations in Symantec India. Therefore, politicians are advised to clearly communicate their websites and blogs to citizens. "The parties should have proper security policies and norms so that websites are not compromised. Also, a team should be designated to monitor the online traffic and keep a check on the content," says Bijral. Source: Times of India