The second day consisted of 6 workshops – 3 before lunch and 3 after. I was confused on choosing between Sheeraj Shah and Mano Paul’s workshops during the first half; and Jason Li’s talk on “Web 2.0  Security” and “Secure Code Review” workshop (originally by Dinis Cruz, but conducted by Gaurav Kumar of Microsoft) on the second half.

Mano Paul

Choosing Mano Paul’s Workshop on Threat Modelling was relatively easier because I am trying to push in Threat Modeling in my company. However, the disappointment of missing Sheeraj’s talk was no less. Although, I must confess Mano Paul is one heck of a presenter. I guess experience always count.

Gaurav Kumar

The decision for the second half was pretty tough. I had finally chosen Secure Code Review talk over Jason Li’s talk, because I’ve a personal interest in Code Review; added by the fact that the workshop was to be conducted by Dinis Cruz. Since we had to pre-select the talks, there was no scope to change it later. Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed initially. However, I must also mention that I don’t regret attending it. It was conducted by Gaurav Kumar, Ace Team, Microsoft. The best part about him, apart from the fact that he knows his stuff, is that he took all the M$ jokes sportingly .

Bipin with Walter and Jordan

I also got to meet Jordan Forssman (Armorize) and Walter Tsai (CTO, Armorize), although I regret not being able to spend enough time and talk some Geeky stuff. Oh and yes, Walter gifted me and Amit the 31337 Armorize T-Shirts . I also got to meet a couple of more like minded people, though very briefly. I couldn’t share cards with all of them. Today Lava (whom I met during Gaurav’s workshop), contacted me today via this blog. Feel greats to be in touch with fellow geeks and to be able to share the geekiness. I’d like to be in touch with others too. Please feel free to buzz me.

I must admit, the hangover remained for quite a few days. It had motivated us to evaluate the possibility of another OWASP conf at Banglore. We’ll be discussing it at the next meet. For now, I have another interesting announcement to make. OWASP Banglore Chapter is starting Open Workshops for developers, students, and anyone interested to learn about Web Security. The first one is on Sept. 7th, at Microland, Bellandur. If you are interested kindly drop me a mail; or even better, joing the OWASP Bangalore mailing list and put up your details.

• OWASP AppSec Conf Delhi – Day 1
• SecurityCamp is here, where are you?
• SecurCamp and back.
• Reviving OWASP Bangalore Chapter
• Rediffmail Bug. Anyone Interested?

Special Note: I don’t have my Canon EOS 350D with me nowadays, so I had to borrow my roomates Canon Powershot. The quality sucks, but still, the pictures are here.

I’ll be honest, going by the conf prices and some of the talk titles; I was expecting OWASP AppSec Delhi to be targeted mainly for managers. Moreover, I didn’t really have enough hopes for the first day talks, at least. It felt even worse when I realized that Dinis Cruz hasn’t been able to make it. I was looking forward to his workshop in App Sec Code Review. But boy, what a day!

The registration was scheduled to begin at 8:15 AM and I reached at 7:45. As if that was not enough, the registration was delayed by another 40-45 minutes. I like to be punctual, but end up playing the endless wait-game more than often.  However, on the bright side I got to interact with a couple of great guys, like Amit Parekh (MPS). Quite surprisingly, I also came across Manjula (Aujas Networks). I say surprisingly because when we had discussed about the conference at a previous OWASP Bangalore chapter meet, she had no plans to visit. I am glad she decided at the last moment.

Before I mention about the talks, I feel obligated to thank Nitin of OWASP Delhi chapter for letting me attend the conference even though my company has failed to pay the conference fees at the moment due to some strange procedural issues.

Bipin & Amit

The day began with the keynote speeches by Dhruv Soni and Puneet Mehta (OWASP Delhi Chapter), Murli Krishna(HP), Dr. Kamlesh Bajaj (DSCI), Jason Li(OWASP), and Mano Paul(ISC^2). The welcome notes by Dhruv and Puneet were followed by Dr. Bajaj and Murli Krishna’s keynotes. I couldn’t help but wish I could get seniors from the network management unit of my firm. I would love to believe that they would have had a heart change with respect to application security after the keynote . Jason spoke on behalf of Dinis and introduced the newbies to OWASP and a couple of its projects. In case you are unaware (like me), there has been an interesting addition to the OWASP projects called ESAPI. It looks good at first glance. Hopefully, I’ll be having a closer look pretty soon. Finally, Mano Paul provided some interesting metaphors to the security scenario, and also introduced the youngest hacker in the crowd, his two year old son. It’ll surely be fun to attend his workshop on Advanced Thread Modelling.

Following the Keynote speeches, Jason Li introduced the crowd to his AntiSamy project. I especially liked the way he’d organized his talk to compare several XSS mitigation techniques and then prove why AntiSamy’s (or HTMLPurifier’s) approach is better . His talk was followed by Rajesh Nayak’s (HP) talk titled Web App Security: Too costly to ignore. Although, it was more of a sales pitch, it did have some valid points; and we did manage to have our share of fun. When a certain demo of his failed a couple of times and he had to restart his system, I couldn’t control my tendency to pass on loud remarks and asked whether it was an HP laptop .

Manjula, Sheeraj, & Amit

The much awaited Sheeraj Shah’s talk on Web 2.0 Security came after the lunch. As expected of him, the talk was pretty technical and wasn’t really for the noobs. He also talked about his home-brewed scripts to analyze Web 2.0 enabled/hyped portals. Later, Roshan Chandran of Paladion presented a very interesting case study on Testing 200+ applications in a $10 Billion Enterprise. This talk provoked a lot of techies in the crowd who were silent till now. Finally, Nischal Bhalla delivered a talk on Building Enterprise AppSec Program. This is something I’ve been trying to do at my workplace (with the help of my Bosses) and I guess I’ll be mailing Nischal for the presentation.

To summarize, none of the talks were any ground breaking research that we were not aware of, but the difference always comes in with experience; and that’s what made it an amazing day. It was great to look at things from the perception of these uber hackers. I am eagerly looking forward for tomorrows workshop’s – Advanced Threat Modelling by Mano Paul, and App Sec Code Review by Gaurav Kumar (which was originally scheduled by Dinis Cruz.

Oh and yes! The food was pretty good too.

• OWASP AppSec Conf Delhi – Day 2; and more
• Reviving OWASP Bangalore Chapter
• SecurityCamp is here, where are you?
• SecurCamp and back.
• TPM Boys withdraw paper from BlackHat USA

If you have not heard of him, I suggest you watch his “last lecture”. A summary of the lecture and Randy Pausch’s life can be read here.

p.s.:
@Johnny: Thanks for updating me.
@Slashdot-ters: Thanks for not making stupid and mean remarks this time.
@Randy Pausch: Rest In Peace dude.

• [OT] Sad demise of Guru Ammannur Madhava Chakyar
• Apache Headache: “no listening sockets available”
• Open JavaFX, an alternative to AJAX?
• Slashdot, uh! :|
• Amazing Interrupt Handling!

Koodiyattam exponent Ammannur Madhava Chakyar, recipient of the Padma Shri as well as the Padma Bhushan honours by the Govrnment of India. He was not only responsible for bringing the art form Kutiyattam (or Koodiyattam) out of temples, but also with reviving it.

The following news article from The Hindu provides other details.

Koodiyattom expert Ammannur Madhava Chakyar died at his residence, Ammannur Chakyar Madom, at Irinjalakuda, near here, on Tuesday. He was 92.
The end came around 9.30 p.m.
The history of modern Koodiyattom is inexorably entwined with Madhava Chakyar’s life and art.
He did not want Koodiyattam to be restricted to the temple arena. His major contribution to the art was to take it beyond traditional confines.
Ammannur’s debut performance was at the age of 11 at the Thirumandhamkunnu temple, Angadipuram. He played the role of Sutradhara in the play ‘Balacharita.’ His first-ever Prabandha Koothuwas held at Trikkovil temple at Chendamangalam.
He trained under the princes of the royal family of erstwhile Kodungallur. He played his first major role, Sreerama in ‘Soorpanakankam’ at the Koodalmanikya temple in Irinjalakuda. He was a recipient of Padma Bhushan, Kalidasa Samman, Kerala Sangeeta Nataka Akademi Award and Kendra Sangeet Nataka Akademi Award. He is survived by his wife Parukutty Nangiaramma.

May his soul rest in peace.

• IFrames – To be or not to be?
• TPM Boys withdraw paper from BlackHat USA
• Fake Steve Jobs Revealed

Anyhoo! The important point is that we finally met today. There were around 12 peole who turned up, and boy, It’s always an honour to meet enthusiastic people from the Security community. Minutes of the meeting will be posted by Hari, Chapter coordinator, pretty soon on the OWASP-Bangalore mailing list. To cut things short, we discussed and decided on a couple of points to revive the Bangalore Chapter. I’ll personally be looking forward to spreading the information to younger audience. So, just in case you are a part of some College around Bangalore, feel free to drop me a note. We’d love to visit your campus and deliver talks, free of charge.
As for the regular meetings, we’ve decided to meet every fourth Wednesday of the month. Venues will of course, keep changing.

p.s. I love the song “Jaane Kya Baat Hai” from the movie Sunny. But somehow, I am not able to get the other song,”Aur Kya Ahde Wafaa Hote Hain”, out of my mind since morning. Not that I am complaining

• SecurCamp and back.
• OWASP AppSec Conf Delhi – Day 1
• SecurityCamp is here, where are you?
• OWASP AppSec Conf Delhi – Day 2; and more
• HTTP protocol and other stuff that power the web

I feel extremely glad to announce that Security Camp, the first security Barcamp in Bangalore (as far as as I know) is on12th of July. It’s being hosted by RSA.

Being a FOSS and NGO enthusiast, I am big fan of communities and highly respect the power they can unleash towards the motive. I have always felt that the Security community in India could be a little more organized and visible. Unfortunately, all I have seen till now is a couple of mailing lists (which are really good btw), some hacker gamers (who game all night long ), and a couple of small conferences (like Club Hack, OWASP’s Mumbai meet). Although these deserve respect in their own right, but there’s always scope for a lot more, especially the visibility factor. Now, this BarCamp isn’t going change everything overnight (in fact the number of registrations are pretty low), but I am happy to see yet another one popping up. Luckily, Harinath, the chapter lead of OWASP-Bangalore, has called for revival of the chapter. I am hoping that we meet at Security Camp and come up with a survival plan

But again, firstly I wish I can make it to the Security Camp. We, at office, are expecting some OpenSocial related work in the first week of July, which probably means no Saturdays and no Sundays I was also hoping to visit the meet with my Geeky-partner Johnny , but he’d be out of town. No complaints though, he’d be talking at GUADEC (uh, who came up with that acronym?)

I am sincerely hoping to be able to make it (and may be take my team there too). If I do, I’ll probably talk about a small research I did towards Designing a Phishing/Fraud IDS. Apart from the fact that I tried talking about it during DevCamp (where my lappy didn’t work with the projector and I’d to hold it in my hand ), I’ve been sleeping on it. Mostly because there’s lot to be done to reduce the false-positives, which is anyways the case with all IDSes.

• SecurCamp and back.
• Reviving OWASP Bangalore Chapter
• OWASP AppSec Conf Delhi – Day 2; and more
• OWASP AppSec Conf Delhi – Day 1
• What a new year Gift! :)

She is red, and she’s hot!

She’s a Dell XPS M1330. Other features include:

1. Intel Core-2 Duo, 2.1 GHz (My first intel. I used to be with AMD)
2. 200GB HD , 7200rpm
3. 128 MB Nvidia graphics card (the games run awesomely, and I have re-entered the gaming arena. Currently re-re-replaying Serious Sam, Second Encounter)
4. Pre-Loaded Vista   (I am still a little confused, whether I go ahead with OpenSuse 10.3 or wait 6 more days for OpenSuse 11 to arrive. )
5. and other regular features like DVD writer, fingerprint scanner, built-in webcam, etc. etc. etc.

I should have updated about her by now, but have been very very busy with an official work involving OpenSocial till yesterday. Hoping to publish other draftified articles soon.

• What a new year Gift! :)
• The Web is Broken
• IFrames – To be or not to be?
• SecurityCamp is here, where are you?
• Apache Headache: “no listening sockets available”

People who know me, know that I desist Social networking portals. Don’t worry, this post isn’t another rant. It’s more of an announcement that I’ve joined a Social Network

Yup! The guys at GNUCitizen have started a social network for hackers, and very intelligently named it House of Hackers. I’d like to call it HoH (as in Hah!)

A few motives cited for creation of the network are:

• To provide platform for hackers to exchange ideas, communicate, or/and even form groups -elite or otherwise. Although Slackers is an amazing place to communicate, web is never big enough for two similar houses. Moreover, they aren’t same, just similar
• Create a Hacker recruitment market. Recruiters could advertise to recruit/hire people from here. The best part of this, as cited, would be that HoH would eliminate any middleman (or you employer), and hence help you earn more. Pretty obviously, this holds meaning for elite ones only. But then I have always believe that you can learn only to the extent you can challenge yourself… and good company definitely challenges you
• Fund Research programs from time to time. Not so long ago, Ronald came up with idea of Router Hacking Challenge, where you had to hack your own router and make the findings public. The _cutest_ hack would be regarded the best. GNUCitizen (Ronald is now a part of GNUCitizen) hosted the contest. I mention this just to affirm that I really like the guys at GNUCitizen, and I am really excited to know that they’d be encouraging the community (and funding them too). The money is expected to come from the recruitment advertisements.

Needless to summarize that I am keeping my eyes open, fingers crossed and hoping that this turns out to be a great venture for the community.

Just one concern, these %*^*@#$ hackers will keep screwing the portal networking portal, you know.

My profile link.

• Orkut Latest XSS Worm; and what it means for Indian Orkuteers
• Drive-by Download: Where Network Security Meets WebAppSec
• Idle Nights: Devil’s Mind
• SecurCamp and back.
• Slashdot, uh! :|

1. Phizy-Phizy-Phizy

I have always loved making this phizy-phizy-phizy sound purposelessly, which I once heard in a Rob Schneider movie (which, if I remember correctly, was a pathetic movie). Anyhoo! I, now, have a set of very strong reasons to move around repeating the same lines.
First, we received a request to be involved in a discussion for a Risk Assessment Model for a Banking site. This model had to be focussed on Two Factor Authentication and Phishing. This brainstorming gave me a couple of interesting avenues to work on. Hopefully, I’ll be writing more in this pretty soon.
Secondly, Peter Thomas (one of my amazing Bosses), forwarded me the link about the latest research by Nitesh Dhanjani & Billy Rios. They virtually infiltrated the Phishers ecosystem and have come up with some very interesting information.
Thirdly, my friend Swen called me up to let me know about a phishing mail, claiming to be a Google survey, that had landed in his mailbox. He was excited for two reasons:
a) He had received a phishing mail for the first time, and I guess you all remember the excitement the first time you discovered your first phishing mail.
b) He is one of the Google fans, and is worried about the safety of the vast majority of user-base Google has. Obviously, his concern isn’t without reasons.

2. A Phish named GoogleSurvey

As I mentioned Swen informed me about the shiny phish called GoogleSurvey. It presents you a page that looks completely similar to the Google Login page and requests you to login in order to complete the survey. If you login, you are presented with 3 questions on by one. At the end you are thanked for completing the survey.

3. Anatomy of Google-Survey-Phish gills

The Google Survey Phish isn’t sophisticated y ANY standards. Clearly, it’s done by some n00b, and was probably deployed using a very cheap Phishing Kit. However, it’s really interesting to understand how it works.
The first page the you encounter while analyzing is http://www.googlesurvey.co.nr/, which I must admit, looks very similar to the Google Mail login page. A look at the source code reveals that this is not the original page. The google mail look-alike page is alike page is actually located at http://googlesurvey.99k.org/. http://www.googlesurvey.co.nr/ only frames the page at with 100% width and 0px border.

Another interesting point to note is that the phisher used a free hosting service http://www.zymic.com/free-web-hosting/. Thus, theoretically he/she cannot be traced. Not via the hosting service, at least.

Now, when you enter your id and password, the data is sent to a php script on the server located at http://googlesurvey.99k.org/LoginAuth.php. Quite obviously, this script stores/mails your credentials for someone who’s not a very pleasing person.

4. Demo: Farming your own Phishes for fun & profit *cough*

The world of Phishing is so dark, deep, safe, easy, and seductive that a person with even a slight malign would be tempted to this farm his/her own phishes and make easy money. I set up my phishing domain for educational purposes. It also shows how quickly you can setup your very own phishing portal, sometimes even without a phishing kit. The domain I’ve setup has the following flaws (introduced to prevent me getting screwed by some half-witted law enforcer) :
1. The domain points at Yahoo!, while the page displayed is similar to the GMail login page.
2. The information entered is NOT stored. You can check it by entering garbage data.

I have used the same page used by the GoogleSurvey Phish, and also used the same free hosting service.

5. Conclusion

It’s almost impossible to prevent users from getting Phished. People will continue to click on links they receive in their inbox and </sarcasm> proceed to win an ipod </sarcasm>. Reducing phishing requires a number of things to be in place -sensible developers, well informed end user, smart browsers with phishing aware features (IE7, Fx2 etc.), a few toolbars like NetCraft to be installed, etc. etc. And even doing all this doesn’t guarantee to save a user ignorant of phshing. I mean how do you save a person who doesn’t even know that such a kind of fraud exists.
Moreover, the URI vulnerabilities have added another dimension to the whole phishing scene.

• "COLUKABKI – AOL – MSN – YAHOO – RED CROSS"….. aaah Comm’n Gimme a break.
• Rediffmail Bug. Anyone Interested?
• AdSense exploited by malware (Trojan.Qhost.WU)
• Google Bomb! [Update: Diffused]
• Top Rating in Google :D

$myArray = array(1, 2, 3, 4, 5);
$yourArray = array(1 => “one”, 2 => “two”, “three”);
$herArray = array(1, 2, 3, array(4 => “four”, “five”));

The proposal is to use square brackets ( [ ] ) to define an array. If passed, we would be able rewrite the above examples as:

$myArray = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
$yourArray = [1 => "one", 2 => "two", "three");
$herArray = [1, 2, 3, [4 => "four", "five"]];

There’s a good deal of discussion going on in the internal mailing list with almost equal number of people voting “for” and “against” it. Rasmus, isn’t not very supportive, yet has voted for the new proposal.

To be pretty honest, I am still not very sure if it’s going to be worth the trade-offs.
Anyhoo! Let’s wait and watch.

• Reviving OWASP Bangalore Chapter
• [How To] Implementing Shindig.
• What a new year Gift! :)
• No more lectures now…
• OWASP AppSec Conf Delhi – Day 2; and more

Although it takes a while for the “player” to load completely, yet I am pretty okay with it (for now). Moreover, it’s in beta. I, however, sincerely hope that it doesn’t follow GMail beta path. urghh!

Check back again in a few hours. I’ll posting a demo of the player on my portal. A demo is here. The demo would have This demo has a special meaning for the Indians of my age (or older than) because the songs I’ll be using will be the one we all grew up with, viz. Jungle Book, Mile Sur Mera Tumhara, Baje Sargam, Byomkesh Bakshi, Malgudi Days, Surabhi, Tipu Sultan & Mahbharat.

Special thanks to Madhav for sharing them.

• Grabbing Video from Youtube.
• Yahoo! gone Insane!
• Drive-by Download: Where Network Security Meets WebAppSec
• A new home for us :)
• M$ WindowsXP just got a newer version of Update with new Components!

I had mentioned in a few previous articles that I see immense potential in w3af. I must, however, also admit that I wasn’t hoping something like this to happen so quickly. I am glad I was wrong

Hoping that more people contribute to the project, and wishing that I get some time to make a few w3af dedicated posts (preferably targeted at developers), at least.

Have a great year ahead.

• The Web is Broken
• SecurCamp and back.
• SecurityCamp is here, where are you?
• OWASP AppSec Conf Delhi – Day 1
• Bittu’s back :)

(The title of this section is taken from Johnny’s blog of the same name, Life and Code. Although my implementation of the phrase isn’t in terms with Johnny’s, yet I could resist using it. )

Life: Three days ago I found that there are some strange entries in my local Apache web server logs. Something like:
127.0.0.1 - - [18/Dec/2007:19:39:26 +0530] "GET /iview/msnnkhac001160x600Xdig1600000185msn/direct;wi.160;hi.600/01 HTTP/1.1" 404 352
127.0.0.1 - - [18/Dec/2007:19:42:19 +0530] "GET /pagead/show_ads.js HTTP/1.1" 404 320

Code: Bitdefender informs of a malware, termed as Trojan.Qhost.WU, is redirecting all the requests made to the Google’s ad server (page2.googlesyndication.com) by the victims browser to a rougue ad server.

2. Impact of the issue:

Reportedly, a big part of Google’s earnings comes from it’s Ad services. Thus this trojan is not only depriving Google of it’s earning’s, but also the publishers who work hard and hope to make some quick buck for their evening coffee.

3. The enigmatic “hosts” file:

You all know that every system connected directly to the internet is assigned a unique IP address. The domain name (viz. http://projectbee.org) is nothing but a unique name assigned to a unique IP (although more than one domain name can be mapped to an ip address, that is not our concern right now). This mapping is stored in DNS servers. Each time the browser tries to open up a site, a nearby DNS server is queried to find the ip address.
However, before all this, the DNS server of your local system, hosts file, is queried. (Don’t mistake me, this DNS server is just a metaphor ). The hosts file stores a domain name to ip address mapping for domains that don’t need a query to DNS server. e.g., localhost is mapped to 127.0.0.1, the loopback ip, i.e. the ip of local system.
On your windows 2000/NT onwards system, it’s located at %systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts and on your *nix systems at /etc/hosts. More info on location can be found here.

Now coming back to my problem; unable to find any satisfactory answer, I posted it on Slackers. (Giorgio) Maone, better known as author of the awesome NoScript plugin for Fx, immediately responded, and asked me to check my hosts file.
I had added a number of entries of ad serving sites to point to the local ip in my hosts file and forgotten. I did this to prevent ads from being loaded. Hence, each time any of these sites were called, the hosts file redirected the requests to my local server.
So pretty obviously, I was/am not infected.
“Why do you post the junk about your issue then?”, you ask.
“Because it was a strange coincidence, and because I can, honey ”

4. How the exploit works?

It’s fairly simple, the malware modifies your hosts file and adds an entry for page2.googlesyndication.com to prevent DNS lookups and direct all the requests to the malicious server.

5. How do I protect myself?

1. Locate your hosts file and remove any entry for page2.googlesyndication.com. Alternately, you can even modify the entry to point to your local ip, in case you don’t wish to see those ads.
2. Let your Antivirus/AntiSpyware do it for you.

6. Conclusion

What! Dump M$ Windows for Linux.
Seriously, “Linux ain’t easy to use” is a myth. Moreover, if you are into flashy looks, try compiz-beryl package. It IS Awesome… (and consumes amazingly less resources than…uh Vista.)

7. Bonus Tip

In case you wish to prevent your kids, partner, (or even parents) from visiting some sites; or do not wish to see those crappy ads from being loaded, you might consider editing your hosts file. For more information or even sample hosts files, use Yahoo! search.

• A Phish floating in Google Survey!
• Apache-MySQLPHP Installation & Configuration Tutorial for Beginners :)
• Amazing Interrupt Handling!
• Month of Search Engine Bugs: “Mission Accomplished”
• Google Lost Me!

Orkut (Google’s MySpace and Facebook for Indian, Pakistan and Brazil) has been hit by an XSS worm. It’s useless to say but I am not able to resist, so I’ll say it anyways. It’s not the first time that a Social networking site has been attacked by an XSS worm. In fact these sites are the primary target due to a number of reasons -easier gullibility level, exponential reach, huge amount of data waiting to be harvested, web 2.0 etc. etc. etc. There’s good compilation of XSS worms going on at Slackers (Social n/w worm, or no).
Anyhoo. This incident has already been reported by a number of bloggers, so I won’t dive into the technical details. However, this worm seems to be harmless and fixed for now.

If you viewed a message 2008 vem ai… que ele comece mto bem para vc in your scrapbook, there is a big probability that you’re infected. You were added to a community named Infectados pelo Vírus do Orkut at http://www.orkut.com/CommunityJoin.aspx?cmm=44001818. The worm then forwards itself to the scrapbook of all your contacts (on your behalf). Any doubts on it being exponential?

IT Act 2000 is India’s legal answer to the miscreants on the technological front. (I realize it’s a pathetic definition, so no flame on it please ). The trouble with IT Act 2000 is that the majority of law enforcers aren’t really aware of the real life scenarios. I’ll give a real case to support the point, in a while. Although I am no law expert (just a little bit of interest), I guess I can safely say that the Act needs a few amendments to include/modify a number of issues (e.g., SPAM, etc.)

So what happens when the implementation is in nascent stage, and the enforcers are not completely eductaed?
Things get blown out of proportion. Things get painted in a completely new color. Things get… uh! fill them up yourself.

Chapter 11 of the Act defines the Offences – section 65 to section 78. For now, let’s have a look at Sections 65, and 67.
Section 65: Tampering with computer source documents.

Whoever knowingly or intentionally conceals, destroys or alters or intentionally or knowingly causes another to conceal, destroy or alter any computer source code used for a computer, computer programme, computer system or computer network, when the computer source code is required to be kept or maintained by law for the time being in force, shall be punishable with imprisonment up to three years, or with fine which may extend up to two lakh rupees, or with both.
Explanation: For the purposes of this section, “computer source code” means the listing of programmes, computer commands, design and layout and programme analysis of computer resource in any form.

Section 67:Publishing of information which is obscene in electronic form.

Whoever publishes or transmits or causes to be published in the electronic form, any material which is lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest or if its effect is such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it, shall be punished on first conviction with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to five years and with fine which may extend to one lakh rupees and in the event of a second or subsequent conviction with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years and also with fine which may extend to two lakh rupees.

I have mostly been interested in section 67 (which according to some in the law indsutry) also extends to sms service

Anyhoo. If you are interested in punishmentsm, here’s the link. Have a look. You might be serving one someday

There have been quite a few cases revolving around Orkut, but the one that I’ll be talking about (and is the most relevant) is the one where wrong man ( named Lakshmana Kailash K) was put behind bars for 50 freakin’ days. He’s “reportedly” involved in the defamation of Chhatrapati Shivaji, a highly revered historical figure.
In case you aren’t aware, Orkut (Google) has signed a pact with Indian Law Enforcement. They pledge to “block any ‘defamatory or inflammatory content’, or hand over IP address information to police if asked”.

So what happened in the above case?
Law enforcers are reported about the defamation of Shivaji, they contact Orkut, Orkut gives IP, law enforcers run to the ISP (Airtel in this case), Airtel provides address, Guy put in jail.
Simple. Isn’t it?

The only trouble being that Airtel provided the wrong address.
Whoops! And bang! The dude spends 50 days straight, for something he didn’t do.
Neha Viswanathan, a blogger based in UK, has a very nice write-up on the incident. Further, there’s a very nice compilation of some Cyber Crime cases in India at the IndiaCyberLab portal.

Let’s first collect all the pieces together:
1. Orkut has a pact with Indian law Enforcement.
2. Law enforcers are incompetent *cough*.
3. Orkut (or any other similar site) still has XSS and CSRF flaws in them. Period.
4. XSS and CSRF let you (among other thousand things) manipulate source code (section 65) and/or insert obscene/derogatory (section 67).
5. XSS and CSRF let you post/manipulate data on some other person’s behalf. (Orkut/Samy etc. worms did not require you to click anywhere. Just load the page and the payload in inserted in your friend’s scrapbook on your behalf).

Now combine them all, and you’ll realize that there might be a day when you just sent a “long time no scraps” scrap in your friends scrapbook and went to bed. The next day, a bunch of Cyber officers wake you up, and arrest you for defaming Bala Saheb Thakrey.

…and yes! Don’t talk about Democracy. You’ve already seen that the politicians can get away with a wrestling in parliament arena that will put WWE stars to shame. On the contrary, a chap is detained for 50 days just because the cops thought that they had enough evidence.

7. Conclusion

What!
Stay away from social networking sites. Trust me, they are not worth the price.

• IFrames – To be or not to be?
• AdSense exploited by malware (Trojan.Qhost.WU)
• Samy: A hero or a villian!
• Yahoo! gone Insane!
• Vista!!! (3 Exclamations.) is here? (Why :-/)

Update: Aah. It’s not that there couldn’t have been any better news , but today’s News is that Ma1 has agreed to provide feature to block frames through NoScript from the next version (1.1.7). NoScripts Rocks.
Oh and Yes! Ma1 Rocks too …;)

I have been pretty busy since the last few weeks (and this trend is likely to continue for the coming weeks). Thus, my posts have been more of “news-flashes”. Apologies for that. I’ve now decided to blog about things/technologies I am working on. (Expect some write-ups on security scanners like w3af and code auditing tools like LAPSE.) However, I couldn’t stop myself from putting forward this debate on IFrames. First, let’s see what are the *evil* things that IFrames can do for… *cough*… you

CASE-I
A couple of days ago, Bank of India site was compromised. It was serving malwares to the visitors. This was done by “drive-by downloads“. The criminals were (invisible) IFRAMES.

CASE-II
I hope most of you are aware how dangerous Javascript can be. Of course, I am referring to XSS attacks. However, the recent research, notably from Jeremiah Grossman, RSnake and Gareth Hayes, showed another shockingly dark side of XSS with CSS (yes, Cascading Style Sheets ). The criminals here are IFrames, visited attribute, etc.

CASE-III
Gareth also gave a proof of concept on his blog to perform CSRF using CSS, even when Javascript is disabled. He (very wisely) used CSS to change the LOOK and FEEL of a Submit button to a link. Now, when a *smart* user is surfing the web with javascript disabled, he’d not worry about clicking a link, and may end up clicking on the *link* to submit the form.

CASE-IV
You decide… .
I have anyways left some other known issues, I think.

Gareth has been preaching the evil nature of IFrames for quite some time now. Yesterday, he made a new entry titled “IFRAMES ARE EVIL” on his blog. He suggested using some attributes/tags to disable/enable iframes etc. Iframes have been on my mind for quite some time. I believe that Content Restriction, once introduced, can solve a number of issues. Till then, I believe, Maone’s NoScript can come to the rescue by proving optional feature to disable iframes. I know, this is definitely not a attractive suggestion, but who knew we’d have to browse with Javascript disabled!

Moreover, I thought it’d be a good opportunity to see what other researchers have to say about it. So, I posted it to the Slackers forum. I am watching keenly.

• NoScript: For Guaranteed Protection From Evil IFrames
• Rediffmail Bug. Anyone Interested?
• Yahoo!’s javascript based media player!
• Java vulnerable to remote compromise
• "COLUKABKI – AOL – MSN – YAHOO – RED CROSS"….. aaah Comm’n Gimme a break.