Recently few official sites have faced some sort of trouble and issue. Expert claims that those issues are probably a threat by hackers. As per the report of Kantipur, the concerned authorities have not shown any response regarding the case.
Expert informed websites of Home ministry, Public Service Commission and other important governmental bodies faced the issues.
A Twitter user based on Philippines publicized about the hacking of websites via twitter.
The twitter account named as a Pinoy Lujuske has created trouble in more than two dozen websites. With that, the report has also hacked the site of the Passport Department and disclosed all the data.
Expert claims that the government websites lack proper security arrangement; government officials are responsible for all these things since they avoid security parts while developing websites. Similarly, they also state the servers of those websites are in unsafe condition.
Not only governments sites are being threatened by the hackers even the private sites facing high risk. Recently the SWIFT account of NIC became the victim. The hackers had employed malware in their system which made it possible to produce around 4.4 million dollars for them.
Lately, the police have arrested a teenager who had hacked the websites of National Tuberculosis Centre, Nepal Telecom, Dairy Development Corporation, Office of Cottage and Small Industries, various educational institutions, among others, besides stealing details of the website users, as stated by The Himalayan Times.
“The Nepali sites are in critical condition. While developing Nepali sites, the security parts are overlooked because of which many Nepali places are at risk of being a hack. Developers of Nepali site often fail in checking its security”, said Bishal Shrestha, ethical hacker.
Defrauding from social media, hacking bank account, stealing personal or organization’s data, call bypass are the major activities that are carried out by cyber attacks in Nepal at present scene. Many of the cyber attacks transpire as the people are deceived for the lottery, foreign employment and abroad study.
According to the Central Research Bureau of Nepal Police, within seven years 44 social network abuse cases have been registered in the court and 62 internet frauds have been arrested. Meanwhile, 52 foreign citizens have been detained for bypassing call and hacking ATM.
Police recently arrested an Indian citizen in Kathmandu accused of defrauding people through Facebook. So far there has also been an increase of Nepali cybercriminals. Numbers of Nepali has enrolled in the business of cybercrime, reports BBC.
Recently, during the press meet of CISCO Global Cyber Security Summit, Sunina Ghimire Pandey, Vice President of CAN, informed around 800 cyber crimes occurred in Nepal but among them, only 11 cases were filed in the court. Pandey also apprised more numbers of deadly cyber attacks can be anticipated in future as all our data has been recorded in the computer system. With that, she also reported different kinds of cyber attacks that are mostly transpired in Nepal. List of those cyber attacks are as mentioned:
- Attacks on social media
- Piracy
- Identity threat
- Unauthorized access
- Website hacking
Recently, Crime Investigation Division handed over much needed digital forensic equipment to the Central Investigation Bureau and Metropolitan investigation Bureau.
THT reported, those equipment are helpful in uncovering and interpreting electronic data, while preserving any evidence in its original form in the course of conducting structured investigation by recovering, collecting, storing, identifying and validating the data to track down past events.
Status of Cyber Forensics in Nepal
- The Nepal Police has established a Digital Forensics Technology (10th December 2015)
- 95 percent of criminal activities at present occur with the use of some form of information technology
- Recommendation: Competent Authority dedicated to handling Cyber incidents is highly essential to cope high-tech as well as common crime.
Earlier the cyber attackers only used to steal data of different individual and organization, but now the trend has been changed they even had started the business of defrauding in the name of various projects, foreign employment and among others.
Police are preparing to establish a separate Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau as the cybersecurity has become very challenging.