Govt Develops Online Game to Counter Cyber Crimes Against Children

New Delhi: The government has launched its own game application for children in a bid to counter incidents of cyber crimes against children due to dangerous games like 'blue whale' and 'momo' challenges.

The 'cyber trivia' app would have a set of multiple choice questions and children would rewarded points based on their answers, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights said.

"It is an attempt to teach these children in a fun way what should be done if they are contacted by a stranger on the Internet who might ask for their pictures or ask them to do things," said Yashwant Jain, a member of the NCPCR.

Feds take down a half-billion dollar cybercrime forum after 7 years online

WITH THE RISE and fall of dark web black markets like Alphabay and the Silk Road, law enforcement officials have repeatedly warned that even anonymity tools like Tor and cryptocurrencies won't hide criminals from the law's long reach. But the most recent takedown of another massive cybercrime forum carries a different lesson: It's still possible to create an online black market even outside of the dark web's cover, grow it to a half-billion dollar operation, and get away with it for the better part of a decade.

Is Not Responding to Trolls The Best Way to Deal With Online Abuse?

According to media persons, focus has to now be shifted from 'bringing people online' to teaching them how to 'behave' online.

In 2016 when journalist Rana Ayyub's book 'Gujarat Riots - Anatomy of a Cover-Up' - was released, she may not have imagined the volume and shelf-life of the hate she was about to receive. Today, two years since the book's release, Ayyub continues to be regularly trolled, she continues to get death and rape threats, her reputation continues to be systematically desecrated, she continues to feature in fake and inciteful 'news' content, tailored to incite ignorant masses. But though Ayyub has remained one of the most trolled women journalists in India, she is not the only one.

Ransom Warrior defeated by decryption tool

Cybersecurity researchers have developed a decryption tool to unlock machines infected by Ransom Warrior ransomware.

The Malware Hunter Team first spotted the malware on August 8 and researchers believe the threat actors are India-based and inexperienced malware developers dude to the malware being written in .NET, an obfuscated executable that isn’t packed or otherwise protected, according to a an Aug. 30 Check Point blog post.

“In fact, the “encryption” used by the ransomware is a stream cipher using a key randomly chosen from a list of 1000 hard-coded keys in RansomWarrior’s binary code,” researchers wrote.

Extremists exploiting small social media websites, experts warn

More needs to be done to stop small social media websites being exploited by extremists, experts have said.

The likes of Facebook and Twitter have responded to calls to remove extremist content over the last 18 months.

And some smaller social media sites have joined a scheme where information is shared to enable blocking content.

Unpicking the cyber-crime economy

urning virtual cash into real money without being caught is a big problem for successful cyber-criminals.

They often have to get creative when "cashing out" or laundering the money they have stolen, according to a security expert.

Ziv Mador, head of security research at Trustwave SpiderLabs. told the BBC that credit card thieves, for example, have limited time to profit, because at some point the victim will put a stop on their card.

What Drives Hackers to a Life of Cybercrime?

t likely comes as no surprise that cyber-criminals are financially motivated, but according to new research, many nefarious actors in the cyber world are also driven to a life of digital crime by ego as well as socioeconomic and psychological factors.

As follow-up to the recent report Under the Hoodie: Lessons from a Season of Penetration Testing published by Rapid 7, Wendy Zamora, malware intelligence at Malwarebytes, set to work on a months-long research piece exploring the psychology, motivations and other underlying factors that drive people to cybercrime.

The results of her work were published today in the long-form article "Under the Hoodie: Why Money, Power, and Ego Drive Hackers to Cybercrime" which includes interviews with reformed and active cyber-criminals as well as research from forensic psychologists, law enforcement officials and professors of criminology.