The Massive Shift to Cyber Crime

 There is a cartoon in The New Yorker of March 30, 2020 showing four mobsters, one with a gun, sitting around a table. The caption reads: “For health and safety reasons, we’ll be transitioning to cyber crime.” You can see the cartoon at https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a24009

No kidding! The huge increase in cyberattacks since the pandemic began is absolutely staggering, but not unexpected. I said as much in my BlogInfSec column of March 23, 2020, with the title: “Cybercriminals’ Motivations during Catastrophic Times.”

But now, some five months later, we are beginning to see some statistics in the press. One such source is the article, “Top Cyber Security Experts Report: 4,000 Cyber Attacks a Day Since COVID-19 Pandemic,” available at https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/top-cyber-security-experts-report-4-000-cyber-attacks-a-day-since-covid-19-pandemic-301110157.html

The article attributes the rise to many more “people working from home, shopping online, and generally being more connected than ever.” While this explains the supply of opportunities, as it were, the demand by cybercriminals is likely exacerbated by the hardships of the times and the vulnerabilities and gullibility of a frightened population confronting a dreadful disease, economic collapse, and social upheavals—all at once.

India to get new, ‘robust’ cyber security policy soon, says PM Modi

 New Delhi: India will soon have a new cyber security policy, announced Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his speech on India’s 74th Independence Day Saturday.

Modi said that his government is aware of the threats emanating from cyber space and how they had the potential to impact India’s society, economy and development. 

“Cyber security is a very important aspect, which cannot be ignored. The government is alert on this and is working on a new, robust policy,” he added.

The announcement was made in the backdrop of the government’s initiative to connect 1.5 lakh gram panchayats through optical fibre network, thereby increasing the country’s internet connectivity. 

Peeking At ‘Privacy’—A Call For Better Cyber Laws Against Crimes Online

While India advances towards abolishing an array of draconian offences embedded in its Penal Code inherited from its colonial ancestors, the likelihood of shedding its age-old skin of punitive measures wrinkled in the criminal justice system as it exists today stands far away from reality. Nevertheless, the disparity between an effort to evolve into a better criminal system and its failure to evolve is hard to ignore.

While we live in the era of demolishing the State’s right to infringe the privacy of an individual’s right to consensual acts of sexual pleasure, the normalcy and nature of which emerges from an interpretation of self-expression into the right to life, the same era breathes and bellows upon us those acts of sexual pleasure that resurrect from the deviant behavior characteristics buried in the mentality of sexual predators online over which the State takes little to no interest.