What is cyber security?

Cybersecurity is a security for technical devices seeks to protect individuals' and organisations' systems, apps, computing devices, sensitive data, and financial assets against computer viruses, sophisticated ransomware attacks, and other threats.

Cybersecurity is the activity of defending systems, networks, and programmes against digital threats. These intrusions are typically intended to access, change, or delete sensitive information; extract money from users via ransomware; or disrupt normal corporate activities.

This is the basic means of cyber security we have learned so far

let's understand more about cyberattacks in detail
There are many cyberattacks that occur not only in technical industry but also seen from infrastructure industries, which are never highlighted through our media lets discuss some of them

Year 2022 was the most dangerous year for India as in NOVEMBER CHINESE HACKERS ATTACKED AT AIIMS hospital in four servers IT WAS a ransomware attack where Chinese hackers given threat to sell sensitive health data.

As compared to last year, the cyberattacks have increased by 38% in 2023 in health sector when everyone was recovering from pandemic and in India's approx. 450 million sensitive data records leaked in past 2 years.

ISRO is the most efficient organisation and still faced cyberattack in 2019 and moreover, exactly in the same month when chandrayan-2 was launched, ..foreign players attacked through the malware of ISRO by which confidential documents , passwords and many items were stolen, if we say the people working in the ISRO are not so tech expert to identify these hackings the answer is no rather they are even pro in technical training and a brilliant tech savvy but if they are not updated for this, then what about us and common people using technical equipment or functioning daily in these equipment's should be more careful and that's why it is necessary to focus on these attacks instead of taking them lightly.

These were the information about space world, lets discuss from other field about nuclear power plant tragedy If you have watched the Chernobyl series, you must have some knowledge. how dangerous were these attacks but still, if we compare that time to now there are safety precautions we are using but still there should be utmost safety need to be taken with nuclear power plant ..

In India we have 22 operational nuclear reactor which in total make 6.8 GW power there is one nuclear plant name Kundalkulam, located in Tamil Nadu which was attacked by cyber hackers in 2020 and not even detected for 6 months. This shows that How seriously we need a tight cyber security and awareness.

How these attacks take place?
Nowadays, hackers adopt smarter techniques day by day

So Basically, Cyberattacks Categories In 5 Category
All cyberattacks are divided into 5 categories that are:

1. Hacking
2. Malware Attack
3. Social Engineering
4. Phishing
5. Ddos

If we talk about the most dangerous attack, i.e. RNSOMEWARE which comes under social engineering which is just like kidnapping this is very common in foreign countries and nowadays not so new in India .

What is RANSOMEWARE?
Ransomware is a type of malware that holds a victim's sensitive data or device hostage, threatening to keep it locked or worse unless the victim pays a ransom to the attacker.

The first ransomware attacks merely demanded a ransom in exchange for the encryption key required to recover access to the affected data or utilise the infected device. By performing regular or continuous data backups, an organisation can reduce costs from various sorts of ransomware attacks and often avoid paying the ransom demand.

In recent years, ransomware attacks have expanded to incorporate double- and triple-extortion strategies, raising the stakes significantly. Even victims who keep meticulous data backups or pay the initial ransom demand are at risk.

Double-extortion assaults include the threat of stealing and disclosing the victim's data online. Triple-extortion attacks include the threat of utilising stolen data to target the victim's customers or business partners.

One more technique used by attackers, i.e. BAITING falls under social engineering

What Is Baiting?

It is like a Baiting is a type of attack in which a social engineer uses a false promise or reward to lure victims and steal sensitive information by infecting their devices with malware. Baits are extremely appealing and seductive, not to mention deceptive, and their ultimate objective is to infect your system and obtain access to personal information.

In this attacker use physical device to trap the victim and out of curiosity victim uses the device like random pen drive and connect it with their system, which steal all the personal data stored in the system through keyboard

Baiting attackers employ use physical gadgets and appealing offers to pique people's curiosity or need, allowing them to trap and extract what they seek from their victims. Baiting shares similarities with phishing assaults, although it differs from the majority of social engineering attempts

What Is Phishing?

Phishing attacks use fraudulent emails, text messages, and phone calls or websites to trick people into sharing sensitive data, downloading malware or otherwise exposing themselves to cybercrime. These phishing scam looks very sophisticated and real .

Last year, Google reported that through YouTube many people get random emails and told to send their data in 7 days otherwise, their account will be deleted these type of official mails which looks like real but not are used in phishing .

What Is Dos?
(Distributive Denyl Of Services).
In April 2023, 8 major airports faced DDOS attacks after many research it came to know that it was ANONYMOUS SUDAN hacker group hacked this.

What Happen In Ddos Attack?
Server use to overload A DDoS attack employs several servers and Internet connections to overload the targeted site. A DDoS assault is one of the most potent tools available on the cyber arena. When you hear about a website being taken down, it usually implies it has been a victim of a DDoS attack. This signifies that hackers have targeted your website or computer by imposing a high level of traffic. As a result, overloading might cause the website or computer to crash .

These cyber attacks are not only limited to this ,in June 2021 ministry of home affairs and defence faced these attacks and in February 2021 HDFC ICICI bank and even (NPCI) who control UPI payments also faced DDOS attack.

WHO gets the profit of cyber crime?
Chianalysis an American research compony .. they hacked and got the information about where these hacking goes and got an interesting fact that 74% Ransomware revenue goes to Russia

If we talk about north korea about 1/3 missile program were funded through cyber hacks .

Recently there was news about DRDO scientist in honey trap case by our neighbourhood country Pakistan .

What is honey trap?
The honeytrap scam is a method of enticing an agent into providing critical information using a seductive woman. In the actual world, it mostly consists of offers from unknown, attractive people who want to meet you on a dating site. If you fall for this scam, you will either lose all of your money or have your computer heavily infected.

In India 31% people almost loose money in cyber attacks that's almost 50 crore people.

Some solutions to prevent such attacks are:

• Dr Pavan Duggal, supreme court lawyer and chairman of the International commission on cyber security suggested that India should have dedicated ministry in terms of cybersecurity they said In 2020 our prime minister told to bring policy based on cyber security but till now no new bill has passed or put before the court ..
  
  
• Our national cyber security law is made in 2013 which is need to update and our main legislation IT ACT is made in 2000 which also need to be implemented
• The second solution is data localisation as now 800 million people using cyber networks, but what about their protection? What type of application they are using? where the data is stored of their application , these information is crucial and important to prevent from hacking
• India needs to localise our personal data with proper check and balance.
  
  
• Third awareness among every person, and education about such hackings must be provided to every citizen from basic and training to detect these hackings in local offices where these tech equipment are in use as every common people should know about the ground reality of this because many hackers know the possible vulnerability so it become easy to hack by using possible outcomes .. and if we are aware about the idea that such lock and privacy is very common and easily accessible we should be attentive and change such privacy immediately because our security is in our hand.
  
  

Conclusion:
Cyber security is an important aspect of our digital life, and we must take it seriously. We can safeguard ourselves and our digital assets by putting in place robust security measures, remaining informed and educated about online hazards, and collaborating to avoid and respond to cyber attacks.

Award Winning Article Is Written By: Ms.Urvashi Shrimali

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