The Island Editorial

Of those young hackers

31 August 2016

 

Hackers are like snakes. When one realises one has been attacked it is often too late; damage is irreversible in most cases. They haven’t even spared institutions which boast of having best cyber security in the world. The Pentagon, too, is fighting quite a battle to keep hackers at bay. How vulnerable others are goes without saying.

Friday’s cyber attack on President Maithripala Sirisena’s official website came as no surprise. Not even eternal vigilance pays in most cases vis-à-vis hackers who like terrorists have to be lucky only once. When the news of the hacking of the President’s website went viral, various conspiracy theories were concocted. Some of those theorists even claimed there was a foreign hand in it. But, a schoolboy of Kadugannawa was taken into custody, on suspicion, two days later.

Hacking is a menace and everything possible must be done to prevent it and bring the culprits to justice. It is heartening that the government has acted so fast to trace the suspect.

Among notorious hackers the world over are many young people, who are nimble-minded risk takers blind to the consequences of their actions. A 15-year-old boy hacked the NASA computers. Many teenagers have become expert code crackers. Stringent punishment for cyber crimes does not seem to have constituted an effective deterrent if the alarming increase in those offences, both here and abroad, is any indication.

No sooner had the CID been called in to investigate Friday’s hacking incident than it closed in on the suspect. Its efficiency is to be highly appreciated. It has silenced its critics who accuse it of lethargy. The question, however, is why the government did not detail the CID to investigate the two mega bond scams and the coal racket which ‘shocked the conscience of the Supreme Court’. Strangely, the CID sleuths lack this kind of high octane performance when they investigate offences committed by ruling party loyalists.

The schoolboy cum suspected young hacker in hot water has obviously raised the hackles of the powers that be. On no grounds can what he is alleged to have done be justified though he looks still wet behind the ears for a hacker. Is it that having seen notorious lawbreakers responsible for far worse offences than hacking handled with kid gloves and even taken off the hook in most cases all these years, the teenager thought he would be safe even if he got caught? He may have thought so because the incumbent janadipathi mama had come to power promising compassionate governance and even forgiven a terrorist who conspired to assassinate him!

On the other hand, this is a country where the Executive Presidents have pardoned convicted criminals such as a rapist thrown behind bars for harming a schoolgirl, murderers and drug dealers. They have also abused their powers to shield many more anti-social elements who deserve to be behind bars. Some leaders of the present government, it may be recalled, went so far as to give VVIP treatment to the terrorists at the very airport the latter had attacked, destroying several lives and causing a loss of billions of rupees to the state coffers. It will be interesting to see how the case of the schoolgoer suspected of hacking the President’s website will be handled.

Meanwhile, let Friday’s hacking incident and the predicament of the schoolboy concerned serve as a warning to all irresponsible netizens in this country, especially teenagers, who seem to think the sky is the limit. The onus is on parents, teachers and other responsible adults to impress on youngsters the gravity of committing cyber related offences which the latter tend to take very lightly.

Ceylon Today Editorial

JVP’s inconsistent policies

 

31 August 2016

Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) MP, Bimal Ratnayake was reported on these pages yesterday of having had said that he's against Government of Sri Lanka's (GoSL's) moves to allegedly privatize the Colombo South Port East Container Terminal (CSPECT).

CSPECT was one of three terminals spawned after the construction of the Colombo South Port with ADB aid a few years ago. One of those three terminals was already privatized in 2011 to the Chinese during the hypocritical Mahinda Rajapaksa regime.

This is because Rajapaksa, soon after he was elected to power in November 2005 disbanded the Public Enterprises Reform Commission (PERC) set-up by his predecessor and former leader President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga with World Bank aid to effectively privatize State enterprises and thereby have a control over the budget deficit, eliminate or minimize inefficiencies in the public sector, give a better service to the public and re-channel State/public/exchequer's resources to fruitful investments as opposed to wasteful expenditure/investments.

Rajapaksa was elected to power in 2005 on the back of the JVP. Rajapaksa scored a narrow victory by obtaining under a 200,000 majority over his arch rival, UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Meanwhile, prior to the election, United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA)'s Economic Adviser, the controversial former Central Bank of Sri Lanka Governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal was quoted by the State-run 'Daily News' on its 21 October 2005 issue, of having claimed that Mahinda Chintanaya (Rajapaksa's policy document) is not for privatization and will always seek to develop 'our indigenous economy'.

Politics, here and abroad, are a mass of contradictions, probably, more so here, just like the above example vis-à-vis privatization only, also played by former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga herself, as well as by the JVP, as shown below:

In as much as the JVP played a major role in ensuring Rajapaksa's win at the 2005 poll, it was this same party that assured the then newly formed UPFA, led by Kumaratunga, to win the April 2004 Parliamentary Poll by foisting the 'Tiger' canard, to the 70% Sinhala-Buddhist majority in respect of Wickremesinghe's ceasefire agreement with the LTTE.

The contradictory stance vis-à-vis privatization, of the JVP is exemplified by the fact that the then JVP MP, Jayantha Wijesekara in an interview with the BBC in March 2005 said, the party has prepared a plan to build a new sugar factory instead of trying to save a corporation, which is up for sale.

This was in the context that PERC announced the sale of many State enterprises including Kantale Sugar Factory in February, the BBC report said. However, UPFA had pledged not to privatize State assets in its 2004 election manifesto.

Wijesekara who was elected from the Trincomalee District at the April 2004 Poll said that he has prepared a plan to build a new factory after President Kumaratunga requested him to come up with a strategy, if any, to safeguard the Corporation. The JVP was a constituent party of the UPFA then.

He denied the JVP is now turning its back to protest any attempt to privatize State enterprises. In this interview, he blamed the opposition UNP for creating PERC to privatize government institutions, perhaps, forgetting conveniently, that it was Kumaratunga who had instituted PERC.

The MP said, the JVP is planning to mobilize people to buy State assets on sale rather than call for a halt.

PERC that functions directly under Kumaratunga has called for investments from local and foreign parties to register 'expressions of interest' to 'purchase assets' belonging to the State, BBC said.
The Eppawala phosphate deposit in Anuradhapura is also among several other State assets for sale, the BBC added. Addressing a public gathering in Southern Sri Lanka after the tsunami disaster, the President warned that anyone who campaigns again to stop the sale of the phosphate deposit will be 'locked up in a hotel and be taken care of'.

PERC has advertised for the 'restructuring' of State-owned media institutions as well.Independent Television Network Ltd., Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation, Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd. and Government Information Department have been advertised by PERC for 'restructuring,' the BBC report said.

Ratnayake's vituperation against privatization as reported by this newspaper yesterday, then is a classic case of the JVP being pro-privatization when in government (after being elected on the anti-privatization card), but being anti-privatization when out of power.

Can the JVP, which practises inconsistent policies, be trusted this time round?

Daily News Editorial

Fighting cyber crime

31 August 2016

Two persons have been arrested so far in connection with the hacking of the President’s official website www.president.gov.lk. One is a 27-year-old man from Moratuwa while the second suspect is a teen (17-year-old) from Kadugannawa. The two hackers, apparently unhappy about the decision to hold the GCE A/L examination in April had posted the following message in Sinhala and English on the President’s official website: “Dear Mr. President, We are extremely displeased about the decision to hold GCE A/L in April since the Sinhala/Hindu New Year falls in between the exam dates. Therefore, reconsider that decision. Furthermore, take care of the security of Sri Lankan websites. Or else, we will have to face a cyber war.” They had also deleted some data from the websites.

Whatever their concerns, hacking the President’s website is a serious offence. In fact, hacking any duly registered website is a punishable offence. The Police must probe whether these two persons acted separately or in unison and if so, whether they had a support network of hackers. The Criminal Investigations Department (CID) and its Cyber Crimes Unit deserve plaudits for their quick detective work which resulted in two arrests within two days. Hackers arrested under the Computer Crimes laws passed in 2007 face three years in jail and/or a fine of up to Rs.300,000 though the Kadugannawa boy being a minor may end up in probation if found guilty.

This is not the first time that websites in Sri Lanka had been hacked, but this is the most high-profile website ever hacked here. A few months ago, the Commercial Bank of Ceylon released a statement admitting that a “hacking attack” on its website resulted in a successful intrusion - however, it maintained that no customer data has been compromised. The bank claimed to have successfully defended itself and said its systems have been fully restored. In another well-known hacking attack that involved Sri Lanka, hackers stole US$ 100 million from the Bangladesh Bank’s (BB) foreign currency account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Almost the entire amount was transferred online to the Philippines banking system and a small portion of it to Sri Lanka by suspected Chinese hackers on February 5 this year. Fortunately, a spelling mistake (Fundation for Foundation) in one of their bank transfer instructions helped save nearly US$ 900 million, as an eagle-eyed younger teller in a Sri Lankan bank noticed the error and notified the authorities.

Hacking a worldwide problem that is not all that easy to tackle. Those who hack or otherwise illegally intrude into websites are called cyber criminals. It is highly damaging to the world economy - hackers are costing consumers and companies between US$ 375 and US$ 575 billion, annually, according to a new study. They have hacked into the major e-commerce sites as well as Government sites. Online crime is estimated at 0.8 per cent of worldwide GDP, with developed countries losing more than countries in Latin American or Africa, according to the study published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and funded by cyber security firm McAfee. “We don’t catch most cyber criminals and we don’t catch the most successful ones,” says James Lewis, a CSIS senior fellow and co-author of the report. “That’s the heart of the problem. So far there is impunity for cyber criminals.”

That is one problem that the world has to solve. Catching cyber criminals is often difficult, but as our sleuths have shown, it can be done. Cyber crime being a relatively recent branch of crime, the laws vary from country to country and some countries are yet to respond to this threat. Moreover, hackers are also branching into new and different areas such as hacking into connected/smart cars and mobile phones. The authorities and regulators have to take these into account when responding to cyber crimes. Sri Lanka however has responded with a fairly robust set of laws against cyber crime and online financial crime (such as hacking attacks on ATMs which are on the rise). The country also has a few institutions that fight online crime including TechCERT, a division of the LK Domain Registry which has a hotline to report cyber crimes, phishing attacks, online identity theft and other online scams. Since its founding 10 years ago, it has solved several hacking and other forms of cyber crime.

As the world gets increasingly connected under the Internet of Things (IoT) initiative where more than 50 billion devices from light bulbs to cars will be connected to each other by 2020, hackers will try to exploit vulnerabilities in cyber defences to wreak havoc. With computers virtually controlling every aspect of our day-to-day life, this is a nightmare scenario. One glitch, one hacking attack can cripple entire nations. That is why eternal vigilance and impregnable cyber defences are needed to thwart the ulterior motives and designs of the worldwide hacking community. It is a battle that they should not be allowed to win.