Online Safety : Hackes To Rescue fom Google News

Ahmedabad: Taking the initiative in protecting websites from attack, city-based ethical hacker Sunny Vaghela will start contacting the owners of sites that are vulnerable to hacking. He will not only demonstrate the loopholes in their systems, but also overhaul them at zero cost.

According to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), around 300 websites in the country are hacked and their data manipulated every month. A survey Vaghela conducted revealed that myriad websites containing critical data are in immediate danger of being hacked.

These include many portals as well as websites of national banks, important academic institutions, telecom firms, social networking sites and government offices. Vaghela will visit the owners of such websites to explain the situation and provide solutions.

"I will be doing this as part of my social responsibility. Though many important websites are highly vulnerable to cyber attacks, there is no awareness among web developers about making these immune to hackers. The possibilities are immense and I cannot stand and watch this happen anymore," Vaghela said.

Vaghela has helped the police in cracking many fraud and crimes cases. He said that a cyber attack from a terrorist organisation or another country could happen any day. "Government and private websites have many loopholes. All of these could be attacked at one go and the country will be paralysed -- whether the economy is being attacked or it is a literal attack. Countries like Pakistan and China are hand in glove with hackers and are even funding them," he said.

Vaghela said he had attempted to communicate to various government authorities and private companies the vulnerability of their websites.

"But they have not responded or reacted in any way. These websites remain as vulnerable as they were. I will start visiting them personally and conduct demonstrations to prove the vulnerability of the websites and fix these, with their permission," he said, adding that his list is ready and he will begin soon.

Did you know
Web designers do not test the immunity to hacking after developing a website.

Their impression that a firewall will protect a website from hackers is not true.

If any one website is prone to being hacked, other websites sharing the same server are not safe at all, whatever measure they take at their end.