Cyber Crime

* A 14-year-old boy raked up bills of thousands of rupees on his father's credit card after he got addicted to viewing pornographic websites. The websites had claimed that they required the credit card number only for verifying that the viewer was an adult. In reality, these websites fraudulently billed the innocent holders of these credit cards.

* A 13-year-old girl creates a virus by downloading a free 'Virus development Kit' from the Internet. She intends to ruin the science project of her classmate. She sends the virus to a classmate. The classmate's father uses his child's computer and unwittingly sends out official mails with the virus attached. This results in huge data losses for several organizations.

* A Class X student, who was taunted by his classmates for having a pockmarked face, puts up a pornographic website and displays nude ' morphed' images of his classmates and teachers.

The Crime Branch of Delhi Police has arrested a 16-year-old schoolboy on charges of creating a pornographic website which contained obscene references to teachers and girl students of his school.

The boy, son of a retired Indian Air Force officer and a Class XII student of Air Force Bal Bharati School, was produced in a juvenile court Thursday and remanded to 14 days' judicial custody in a juvenile remand home in Timarpur in North Delhi for the alleged crime, believed to be the first of its kind in the country.

''His parents are moving a bail application today in the juvenile court in Kingsway Camp [North Delhi],'' a senior police official said. According to police, the boy had created the site [amazing-gents.8m.net] at his house to take ''revenge against schoolmates who made fun of him''.

The site carried names of teachers and many girl students of the school with obscene remarks about them and their ''imagined sexual behaviour'', police said. Police moved in only after the father of a girl student whose named figured in the site complained to the special cyber cell of the Crime Branch.

The Crime Branch sleuths could trace the culprit after getting in touch with a web-hosting firm, based in the United States. Meanwhile, the school authorities have threatened strict disciplinary action against those involved in creation of the site. Cyber crimes in the country come under the Information Technology Act, enacted last year. Those found guilty could be sentenced to up to three years in prison with fines.

(http://www.netguruindia.com/news/jun00/del02jun00.html#r2)

Delhi police pulled up their collars after nabbing the first cyber criminal. Mukesh Gupta hardware engineer by profession was arrested for stealing Internet hours of another person. The entire episode started when a retired colonel JS Bajwa complained that his Internet hours bought from the VSNL was being stolen. Almost 100 hours worth Rs 2300 were being stolen from his Internet account. The colonel reported the issue to the police who were not sure of the way to treat this matter. But due to the constant pursuing of the former Army officer the matter was considered by the Economic Offences wing of the Crime branch. Bajwa informed the police that he had contacted Nicom Systems to set up his modem after buying the Internet hours from the VSNL.

A man called Mukesh Gupta had come to set up the modem and he himself had told him his password to activate his account. Investigating the case the policemen learnt that Bajwa's account had been accessed from several other places and that in all the places Mukesh Gupta's name was common. Further investigations revealed that all these places were serviced by Nicom Systems and Mukesh Gupta was looking after the maintenance at these places. In two places the computer owners even mentioned Gupta accessing Bajwa's Internet account. With enough evidences against Mukesh Gupta police did not have to wait long before nabbing him.

In what seems to ba shocking incident in the realms of cyber world, the world's first Internet murder shook the heart of millions and raised a serious question on online relationships. The body of 16-year-old Israeli, Ofir Rachum, was found near the Palestinian town of Ramallah, shot by members of the Palestinian Tanzim group, who set up a trap for him in a chat room. Racham had started chatting with a girl who claimed to be 20 and a foreigner, but was actually a local girl employed by the group. Slowly the online relationship moved from chat to e-mail contact and phone calls. Finally, they decided to meet, and that turned out to be the last day of Rachum's life; he was shot 15 times.

Meanwhile, the Israelis and Palestinians are waging a cyber war, using various methods like site defacement, system penetration and misinformation campaign. The hacker's war continues to heat up.