Infi-Zeal's Blog

 It is possible for an adversary or a group of hackers to cripple India's power grids through a cyber-attack, although this is an unlikely reason for the recent power outages that crippled much of north, east and north-eastern India.  Since the first power trip up on Monday, there have been discussions within the security establishment about the possibility of entities trying to carry out a sophisticated cyber-attack to cripple the grids.  Officials who carried out an audit of critical information infrastructure admit it is "theoretically possible" to cripple India's power grids through a cyber-attack.  Despite such a possibility, the shutdown did not seem to have led to a crisis management procedure that aimed at ruling out or confirming a cyber-attack.  "Given the fact that our grids are vulnerable to a cyber-attack, those responsible for managing grids should have a proactive policy to rule out cyber-attack as part of their crisis management procedures,...

The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in Bangladesh says it has traced an Indian IP (Internet Protocol) address used for hacking 20 district portals, but acknowledges that the real identity of the hacker could be concealed.  The hacked sites were operated by the PMO and the incident is considered to be a serious security lapse.  "We have initially detected an Indian IP address that belongs to Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL), one of the largest Internet service providers in India," said SM Akash, media manager of Access to Information (A2i) team of the PMO.  Professional hackers, however, use various methods to hide their real IP address and location, The Daily Star quoted him as saying.  The Bangladesh government will ask VSNL for details of the IP address and the hacker's location, said the official.  Twenty district websites operated by the PMO were hacked on Saturday.  Some Hindi letters and ‘JAI HIND!’ were posted on the hacked websites.  The...

Norton Anti Virus 2006 A group of Indian hackers claim to have obtained the source code for Symantec’s Norton Antivirus, the 2006 version. Experts report that if the claims were true, it could give cybercriminals the opportunity to create new malware that incorporates mechanisms to better avoid security solutions. Infosec Island  has been provided with a sample file that appears to contain the source code for the popular antivirus. Symantec was immediately contacted and the company confirmed that the file indeed contained a segment of their product’s source code, but the incident is still being investigated. “Symantec can confirm that a segment of its source code has been accessed. Symantec’s own network was not breached, but rather that of a third party entity. We are still gathering information on the details and are not in a position to provide specifics on the third party involved,” Cris Paden, sr. manager for corporate communications at Symantec  said . “Prese...