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Indian child trafficking on the rise
Approximately 90,000 children went missing in India in 2011 alone. Nearly half of these cases remain unsolved
When police in the north Indian state of Punjab announced the arrest of a grandfather for allegedly selling his infant grandson on Facebook, the news immediately went viral.
But the real story is hidden behind the headline: The buying and selling of children is alarmingly commonplace in India.
“The numbers are shocking now,” said Bhuwan Ribhu, a lawyer who works with the Save the Childhood Movement, a New Delhi–based nonprofit that fights child trafficking and other forms of exploitation.
According to official government estimates, around 90,000 children went missing in India in 2011 alone. And while police contend that many are runaways whose return home is never reported, nearly 35,000 remain untraced, and only 15,000 of the total cases were ever investigated.
Indeed, the Facebook baby was lucky — even if the anonymity offered by the Internet may present an ominous threat in the hands of more savvy criminals. Police acted swiftly to recover the infant boy after his mother, Noori, complained that her father-in-law, Feroz Khan, had allegedly told her the baby had died and spirited him away with the aid of hospital staff.
“After investigations, we found the grandfather of the child had struck a deal with a man in Delhi and had roped-in the nursing staff to smuggle the baby out of the nursing home,” Ishwar Singh, commissioner of police in Ludhiana, told the Telegraph. “We have arrested four people including the grandfather. We have also booked the buyer from Delhi.”
That is hardly the experience of most parents. Since 2007, when the exposure of a serial killer in Nithari, on the outskirts of New Delhi, revealed that local police had ignored parents’ pleas that their children had disappeared, evidence has piled up showing that officials continue to disregard complaints of missing children.
When GlobalPost visited the homes of parents with missing children for an earlier report, it was painfully clear that the economic status of the families plays a disturbing role in the treatment of their cases.
The desperate circumstances of the slums encourage the authorities to believe that children have simply run away. And sometimes, the plight of the family prompts suspicion that a family member — like the grandfather of the Facebook baby — may be involved in the disappearance.
According to child protection experts, however, cases in which parents or other family members knowingly sell their children are rare. More often, the family is duped into surrendering their child with the promise that he or she will be given a job and a better life in the city — sending home money every month. Some cash changes hands, but it is described as an advance, and most likely intended to sow seeds of guilt among family members that later help stymie any official investigation.
“In the majority of the cases we deal with the child is being taken away with the promise of a better job or a better life and then disappears,” said Ribhu, who the night before had participated in the rescue of a trafficked girl from a house in New Delhi where she was being held.
Earlier this year, India enacted a strong new law prohibiting all forms of human trafficking — whether for labor, slavery, sex or adoption — proscribing a prison term of seven years to life. But the new law has yet to make a difference, as it has not yet been backed by widespread institutional changes, says Ribhu.
Just days before the alleged sale of the Facebook baby, India’s capital erupted in wide-scale protests when citizens learned that police had allegedly offered the father of a 5-year-old rape victim a bribe to try to prevent him from revealing that they initially refused to investigate her disappearance.
The delay in the investigation took on new meaning when the brutalized child was found, 40 hours later, in another apartment of the building where her family lives. (She remains in the hospital where she has been treated for severe internal injuries.)
It appears this young girl represents the norm. An investigation by India’s Mail Today newspaper, covering six New Delhi police stations, found that despite the new directives, police are still reluctant to file cases when parents come to report missing children. In some cases, they allegedly pressured parents to withdraw their complaints, while in others they demanded money before they would take action, according to the report.
Child protection experts are not the least bit surprised.
“Out of the 10 children who are going missing every hour, only one case is being investigated,” said Ribhu. “These children are all being put into various kinds of exploitation. And a child who is being sold on Facebook is not even a part of this figure.”
Article as appeared in http://www.salon.com/2013/05/05/child_trafficking_in_india_on_the_rise_partner/
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Funding soars for security startups as cyberattacks keep coming
Cyberattacks hitting one company after another — including defense contractor QinetiQ — have garnered plenty of headlines in recent months. And while that’s got to cause headaches for victims, it might not be such a bad thing, because it makes governments and other businesses notice. It turns out that venture capitalists have taken note, too, and have been putting more of their dollars behind security startups in hopes that those companies go big.
The numbers bear out the trend. In the first quarter of 2013, VCs dumped nearly $353 million into IT security deals, up 90 percent over that quarter the previous year, according to MoneyTree Report data provided to GigaOM by the National Venture Capital Association. If you divide the total funding by the number of deals, the average amount was more than $16 million, up 125 percent over the $7.1 million amount in the first quarter of 2012.Security startups that have taken on VC funding rounds this year include Cylance, TraceVector and vArmour Networks, among others.
The intersection of big data and security has been a hot space, as companies move to collect lots of information and analyze it all as fast as possible, just as companies want to derive insights on increasing and more complex data sets that can lead to overhead reductions and new revenue streams. For example, in October, EMC said it would buy Silver Tail Systems, which tracks web and mobile-app traffic and points to unusual behavior and violations that customers can set. To separate the wheat from the chaff of vulnerabilities that multiple security systems might discover and to use security staffers efficiently, Risk I/O prioritizes issues. Last year it got $5.25 million.
Are the cyberattacks nudging VCs to shell out millions? Shirish Sathaye, a general partner at Khosla Ventures, which has invested in Cylance and TraceVector along with Lookout and DB Networks, thinks the cyberattack news onslaught is making a difference.
“The first reason is, yes, every time you open a newspaper, you read about somebody being attacked,” he said, whether against consumers or companies. The likelihood and complexity of attacks only become greater as more people get online, often with multiple devices.
The multiplicity of devices accessing a network — a trend in its own right — could pose security challenges on its own, and Tenable Network Security picked up $50 million last year following the addition of features that look for vulnerabilities popping up as mobile devices and provide information on devices such as whether they are jailbroken. Last month Ionic Security, which keeps data encrypted as it moves to devices, said it had raised $9.4 million in new funding.
Another reason for the security funding boom, Sathaye said, is the success of network security player Palo Alto Networks. Prior to its public offering last year, threats might well have helped its appeal.
From Sathaye’s point of view, it’s critical to nurture the ecosystem of options for strengthening network and endpoint security. “As bad guys keep innovating, good guys have to innovate at least as fast as them, if not faster,” he said. With more money going toward IT-security startups, it does seem that plenty of other VCs think there’s an opportunity here.
As published on http://gigaom.com/2013/05/03/funding-soars-for-security-startups-as-cyberattacks-keep-coming/
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Muggers Increasingly Stealing Samsung Phones Instead Of iPhones
Here’s a funny detail from James Temple at the San Francisco Chronicle.
As Samsung has grown in popularity with consumers around the world, it’s also growing in popularity with muggers.
Temple talked to Capt. Joe Garrity of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Station.
Garrity says that half of the robberies reported are electronics. And half of those robberies are iPhones.
However, Temple reports, “Samsung phones earned their own category this month, after officers noted a sharp rise this year in swipes of phones like the company’s Galaxy line.”
The reason Samsung is on the rise is that more people are walking around with them.
“It’s whatever is popular,” Garrity said. “The opportunists are grabbing what they can.”
As published on http://www.businessinsider.com/muggers-are-going-after-samsung-phones-2013-5
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Internet Explorer zero-day exploit targets nuclear weapons researchers (Updated)
Attackers exploited a previously unknown and currently unpatched security bug in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser to surreptitiously install malware on the computers of federal government workers involved in nuclear weapons research, researchers said Friday.
The attack code appears to have exploited a zero-day vulnerability in IE version 8 when running on Windows XP, researchers from security firm Invincea said in a blog post. The researchers have received reports that IE running on Windows 7 is susceptible to the same exploit but have not been able to independently confirm that. Versions 6 and 7 of the Microsoft browser don’t appear to be vulnerable.
Update: In an advisory published a couple hours after this article went live, Microsoft confirmed a code-execution vulnerability in IE8. Versions 6, 7, 9, and 10 of the browser are immune to the exploit. People using IE8 should upgrade to versions 9 or 10, if at all possible. Those who are unable to move away from version 8 should take the following mitigations:
- Set Internet and local intranet security zone settings to “High” to block ActiveX Controls and Active Scripting in these zones
This will help prevent exploitation but may affect usability; therefore, trusted sites should be added to the Internet Explorer Trusted Sites zone to minimize disruption.- Configure Internet Explorer to prompt before running Active Scripting or to disable Active Scripting in the Internet and local intranet security zones
This will help prevent exploitation but can affect usability, so trusted sites should be added to the Internet Explorer Trusted Sites zone to minimize disruption.
The attack was triggered by a US Department of Labor website that was compromised to redirect visitors to a series of intermediary addresses that ultimately exploited the vulnerability, according to Invincea. The exploit caused vulnerable Windows machines to be compromised by “Poison Ivy,” a notorious backdoor trojan that had been modified so it was detected by only two of 46 major antivirus programs in the hours immediately following the attack. The specific webpages that were hacked dealt with illnesses suffered by employees and contractors developing atomic weapons for the Department of Energy, the blog post said, citing this report from NextGov. That’s consistent with so-called “watering hole” attacks, in which employees of a targeted organization are infected by planting malware on the sites they’re known to frequent.
“The target of this attack appears to be employees of the Dept of Energy that likely work in nuclear weapons research,” Invincea researchers wrote in a separate report published Wednesday. The report went on to cite this technical analysis from security firm AlienVault. It found indicators in the command servers Poison Ivy contacted that the attack was carried out by “DeepPanda,” a group of hackers believed to be located in China and carry out espionage attacks on other countries.
Initial reports about the Department of Labor website compromise said an older IE vulnerability that Microsoft patched in January had been exploited. It was only in Friday’s report that Invincea said this assessment is incorrect.
“For non-Invincea users, there are no known mitigations for this exploit that is currently in the wild,” Friday’s report warned. “For users of IE8, there is no patch currently available and with this exploit being out in the wild, the potential risk for damage is high.”
As published on http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/internet-explorer-zero-day-exploit-targets-nuclear-weapons-researchers/
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The IT department is flattening office hierarchy, one device at a time
Everyone is fretting over “bring your own device” policies and the headaches they mean for the information-technology department. But the silver lining is that they also help make workplaces, across titles and time zones, much more equitable places.
Corporate access to devices is being driven by the organization’s need for increasing productivity, not the need to save money by limiting access. Within organizations, different people already use laptops, desktops, tablets and smartphones depending on their role within the company. In the past this was heavily influenced by the level the individual held within the organization; however, in recent years, with lower costs for portable devices, this is no longer the case. People who are on the move (i.e. nearly everyone) require portable devices—be they smartphones, laptops or tablets—regardless of whether they are sales representatives or CEOs.
Regardless of country or work function, equality among workers can be ensured by providing appropriate access to the information needed to do the job and the tools to manage that information. Which device (including operating system) should not be an obstacle to that access and the correct device is very likely to be dependent on the task to be performed.
Device selection and operating system (OS) selection go hand-in-hand because the OS is coupled with the device (e.g. Apple iOS with iPads and iPhones, Microsoft Windows with laptops, Android with many other Smartphones, Linux as an option on laptops and desktops, etc.). When we select one, we really select both.
Workers are selecting the device and associated operating system they are most familiar with. The ever-increasing array of smartphones, tablets and computer devices are available in almost every country so there are no constraints to what a worker can choose now that BYOD has arrived. The benefit to the organization is that workers are happier and more productive as a result.
While still in their early stages, mobile-device management solutions are helping IT to secure any device being used in the corporate environment, which in turn, allows workers and organizations to use the devices that they prefer–all leading to help ensure information access and equality among workers.
As published on http://qz.com/74535/the-software-thats-making-it-easier-to-use-your-phone-at-work/
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Why you should take hacked sites’ password assurances with a grain of salt
Reputation.com, a service that helps people and companies manage negative search results, has suffered a security breach that has exposed user names, e-mail and physical addresses, and in some cases, password data.
In an e-mail sent to users on Tuesday, officials with the Redwood City, California-based company said the passwords were “highly encrypted (‘salted’ and ‘hashed’),” a highly vague description that can mean different things to different people. “Although it was highly unlikely that these passwords could ever be decrypted, we immediately changed the password of every user to prevent any possible unauthorized account access,” the e-mail added unconvincingly.
It’s unfortunate that companies make such assurances, because they may give users a false sense of security. As Ars has been reporting for nine months, gains in cracking techniques means the average password has never been weaker, allowing attackers to decipher even long passwords with numbers, letters, and symbols in them. Even Ars’ own Nate Anderson—a self-described newbie to password cracking—was able to crack more than 45 percent of a 17,000-hash list using software and dictionaries he downloaded online.
Jeremi Gosney, a password cracking expert with Stricture Consulting Group recently explained in an Ars forum post that it’s highly unusual for a leaked password list to go uncracked, as suggested by the Reputation.com e-mail.
“It definitely depends on the specific leak we’re talking about, but generally speaking, your average security expert/penetration tester/casual password cracker is probably only going to be able to recover at most 50-60% of passwords in any given leak,” he wrote. “Seasoned password crackers will likely recover 70-75%; and truly exceptional password crackers will recover 80% or more.”
Adding cryptographic salt to passwords is crucial to the safe storage of passwords because it forces password cracking programs to guess the plaintext for each individual hash, rather than guessing passwords for thousands or millions of hashes all at once. (Yes, it also thwarts rainbow-table attacks, but no one uses this method anymore.) But it’s easy to overstate the benefits of salting. It in no way slows down the cracking of a single hash, so if an attacker locates the hash belonging to a particular high-value Reputation.com user, the measure does nothing to thwart the cracking of that hash. The security value of salting alone only slows down cracking of large lists by a multiple of the number of unique salts, so that value decreases with each hash that is decoded.
A far more meaningful security measure is the type of algorithm that’s used to convert plaintext passwords into cryptographic hashes. If the company used SHA1, SHA3, MD5, or any number of other “fast” hashes, it’s extremely likely that at least some of the leaked password data has already been cracked. If, on the other hand, the company used bcrypt, scrypt, PBKDF2 or another “slow” algorithm specifically designed to hash passwords, the chances are significantly lower. Reputation.com makes no mention of the algorithm it used, so users should presume the worst. Anyone who used their Reputation.com password to protect one or more accounts on other sites should change those passcodes immediately. Passwords should be randomly generated by a password-manager, contain a minimum length of 11 characters, and include numbers, letters, and symbols. They should also be unique to each site.
Article as published on http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/why-you-should-take-hacked-sites-password-assurances-with-a-grain-of-salt/
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American Airlines Pilots Lose 40lb With Apple iPad Electronic Flight Bag
American Airlines recently got permission to use its iPad Electronic Flight Bags in the cockpit during all phases of flight, saving an estimated $1.2 million of fuel annually.
For pilots, it’s a huge benefit. A bag full of airways charts, airport maps and operations manuals can weigh 35 or 40 pounds. If you think your carry-on bag is heavy, try adding that for every trip.
There’s a big safety benefit too. Pilots can find the right charts quickly and easily and, at least when I use Jeppesen plates on my iPad, you can see where the plane is on the airport. When I flew into Schiphol last time, I had a 20 minute taxi across the airport and this georeferencing was incredibly helpful.
The iPad revolution has come to general aviation already. For example, my instructor uses his iPad to record lesson notes, including photos and videos of cockpit displays so he can go through them after the flight with his students. He also uses it as a kneeboard to scribble clearances and other in-flight information. Following his example, I have started using my iPad Mini in the plane too and it’s proving to be a very valuable addition to my kit bag.
Article as published on http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewstibbe/2013/05/03/american-airlines-pilots-lose-40lb-with-apple-ipad-electronic-flight-bag/
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Sleepy Cat
Sleepy Cat
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Life
When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed-door that we do not see the one that has opened for us.
– Alexander Graham Bell
::: Shailendra Nair ::: 
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