Naavi.org

In a bid to continue the legacy of naavi.org as an endeavour to “Build a Responsible Cyber Society”, Naavi has started yet another educational website that should complement the current activities in promoting Cyber Law Compliance in IT industry in India. This new effort is to build awareness about the “General Data Protection Regulation” (GDPR) which has replaced the Data Protection Regime in European Union and is set to change the landscape in Privacy practice in India and elsewhere in the globe.

Indian IT industry being a dependent on data processing of which a large share of business may come from the EU countries need to ensure that we donot lose business or incur liabilities on account of non compliance of GDPR.

SMEs and Mobile App companies specifically require knowledge input and consultancy to ensure that they are on the right side of the regulations to protect their business.  Towards building a knowledge infrastructure in this regard, Naavi has now started a new website www.gdpr.ind.in dedicated to the presentation of the regulation. This will be supplemented by analysis and discussions on  www.privacy.ind.in (Privacy Knowledge Center) besides this parent website.

Naavi recognizes that the field of Privacy is vast and we can only be a catalyst in starting what we can call as a “Knowledge Center”. For it to truly become one, contributions are to be made by other like minded professionals who can share knowledge for public good.

I take this opportunity therefore to invite Privacy professionals to contribute their thoughts to the building up of the knowledge related to compliance of Privacy Laws such as GDPR so that India may in due course becomes a country recognized as  the best GDPR compliant country. The articles may be published on the Privacy Knowledge Center with due acknowledgement of the contribution.

Come, let us start our journey towards making India the best GDPR compliant country.

Naavi

A welcome initiative of a dedicated website aimed at Cyber Security support for the public was launched today at Delhi in the form of www.cyberswachhtakendra.gov.in

The website is operated by CERT-In and appears to be supported by Quickheal and is promoted as a Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Center”. One of the objectives of the CSK would be to detect botnet infections in India and notify, enable cleaning and securing systems of end users so as to prevent further infections.

The site proposes to provide Cyber Security information as well as free scanning tools from Quickheal for malware.

It may be noted that during the evolution of Naavi.org over a time, links to many malware removal tools and anti virus tools had been provided (See the archive of a page in 2005 showing link to panda scanning software and virus information links on the left menu) along with the educational aspects now proposed by Cyber Swatchhta Kendra. Naavi.org can take the pride that several years before securing Digital India concept evolved at Government level, we were already setting the trend. Naavi.org has evolved subsequently but we hope that many of its services and suggestions will continue to motivate and guide other institutions including Government agencies in the coming days.

We welcome the CSK  initiative and hope it will be maintained properly as it is expected to attract special attention of attackers with an intention to tarnish the image of the Government.

(CSK was a popular abbreviation used by  Chennai Super Kings, a team of the Indian Premier League (IPL). Since it is no longer in operation as an IPL team, the abbreviation CSK can be used for Cyber Swachchta Kendra. It has otherwise been referred to as the Botnet cleaning and Malware Analysis Center with the abbreviation BCMAC)

Naavi

For records we may say that RBI has sought public comments on its draft circular for revising MDR charges downwards as a part of the follow up on Watal Committee report implementation. A copy of the draft circular is available here.

According to the notification issued in this regard dated 16th February 2017    comments/ suggestions/ feedback, if any, may be sent by post to the Chief General Manager, Department of Payment and Settlement Systems, Reserve Bank of India, Central Office Building, 14th Floor, Shahid Bhagat Singh Road, Mumbai – 400 001, or by  e mail to mdrfeedback@rbi.org.in on or before February 28, 2017.

It has been pointed out in the case of the draft circular of August 11, 2016 regarding “Limited Liability of Customers on unauthorized transactions”,RBI issued the draft circular for public comments upto August 31, 2016, obtained the comments and then went silent.

Despite all forms of nudging, RBI continues to remain silent to the day and has not implemented the draft circular nor has made public the comments received. In RTI applications, RBI has stated that it is still evaluating the public responses even after 8 months and is apparently lying to the public that it is desirous of implementing the circular because Banks donot want it.

The Finance Minister and  PMO are also remaining silent on the representations about the non implementation of the August 11 circular.

This incident has proved that RBI is in the habit of issuing draft circulars for public comments without any intention of taking action based on such comments if the other stake holders namely Banks are not in agreement. The calling for public comments appears to be a farce.

It could perhaps be a strategy to kill a move pushed by some RBI executives who falsely believe that RBI is an organization with a mandate to safeguard the interest of the Banking public in India and not a promotional agency for promoting the share holder interests of Banks!

Under the circumstances, the draft circular on MDR charges may also be an eye-wash and RBI may not implement any reduction of MDR charges if Banks oppose the same. The underlying fact is that RBI is no longer regulating the Banks. It is the Banks and the IBA which is manipulating the policies that come out through RBI.

Despite a few individuals in RBI who have the intention of doing good to people and succeed from time to time to persuade the policy makers to move towards making some consumer oriented changes, their efforts are scuttled by issuing such draft circulars which are later buried without follow up.

I wish Mr Urjit Patel proves me wrong.

Naavi

The Government of India is placing a huge reliance on Aadhaar for all forms of KYC. In the coming days, the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) will also be introduced where the biometric of the Aadhaar owner will be used to trigger a financial transaction like the UPI/BHIM application that may be used to send or receive money from another UPI account. It is said that this will be a “PIN Less” and “OTP Less System”.

What this means is that as soon as the application is triggered with a fund transfer request and the biometric of the aadhaar owner is provided to the UPI application, the payment will be completed without a second reference to the account holder. It will be like a “Single Click Payment System”.

There is no doubt that from the user perspective the AEPS will be a very convenient system and particularly for the less educated persons, it appears to be an excellent system. However, one should not forget that in the financial transactions, “Convenience” is only one of the aspects of the transactions and “Security” is another important aspect that needs to be taken care of in any digital payment system.

It is to be reiterated that the systems being introduced by the Government expose the public to risks that are being ignored by the Government and its advisors.

Presently, Aadhaar has introduced a system where by the “Biometric” can be “locked”.  When the biometric is locked, the system may generate an OTP for unlocking. Alternatively, the aadhaar holder has to go to the website and unlock the biometric which again can be done by an OTP. While this is touted to be a security feature that will prevent misuse of an aadhaar number, it must be recognized that the locking and unlocking is only linked to the OTP sent to the registered mobile and hence if a fraudster can get hold of a duplicate SIM, he can over come the locking security.

Thus in many ways, the OTP becomes the determining factor to secure a digital transaction. The security of OTP is directly related to the KYC system adopted by a mobile service provider particularly when a SIM is reported lost and a replacement is sought.

Recently, the Supreme Court has suggested that every Aadhaar number may be linked to a mobile again thinking that this would secure the system.

If for any reason this mobile OTP becomes the norm, then there is a need to ensure that this system is hardened by

a) Sending OTP by encrypted message

b) Increasing the complexity of OTP from a 4 digit numerical to atleast 6 digit numerical and if possible a combination of letters and numbers

c) Using voice based OTP delivery instead of a text based delivery

d) Return OTP also to be encrypted

e) OTP on either side to be sent and received with a digital signature which is both secure and also cyber law compliant.

While I donot expect many operators to become cyber law compliant and use digital signatures on mobile, encryption can be adopted without much of difficulty. However there needs to be a secure key management system to ensure that the security is difficult to be breached.

I hope the authorities including the implementers of the  Watal Committee recommendations will consider appropriate measures to take steps to harden the security of the OTP system which has already been degraded by NIST in USA but continue to be used in India.

I presume that the mobile operators also realize their responsibility in exercising care in obtaining KYC of their customers both when new SIM cards are issued and when lost SIM cards are replaced.

The irony of the current system is that the mobile operator may use an aadhaar as KYC for issue of SIM cards while the Aadhaar uses the OTP on the SIM card for issue locking and unlocking biomeric or for issue of e-aadhaar. This circular authentication is not the ideal security support and it becomes more or less a “Single Factor” authentication system. There is therefore a need to think of alternate measures to break this “Circular authentication system”.

Naavi

For the last few days, the fight for the CMs chair launched by Ms Sasikala Natarajan (VKS) against Mr O Panneerselvam (OPS) had reached a crescendo with the MLAs supposedly supporting her being held at a resort. The MLAs were not allowed any interaction with the outside world and had even been cut off from TV, News Paper and Internet. A few MLAs from this group ran out of captivity and joined Mr OPS camp confirming that they had been held against their will by VKS. This was a complaint of a cognizable offence which the Police ignored to take notice. Even when the Court asked for a report, Police were only able to report that 119 MLAs had confirmed that they were staying at their own will and not forcibly held captive. However there were at least about 124 MLAs at that time in the resort and why Police could not meet the other 5 MLAs was not known.

Today, the Supreme Court judgement held that Ms VSK is guilty in the Disproportionate Asset (DA) Case and has to undergo 4 years of imprisonment. This effectively made her ineligible for being elected as CM. The VSK camp has now elected an alternate person and still claiming the CM’s post. However OPS who is the care taker CM continues to make his claim that majority of MLAs will support him if there is a proper test of strength.

It is creditable that the Supreme Court which took more than 8 months to come out with its judgement to reverse the previous judgement of Karnataka High Court (Judge: MR Kumaraswamy, since retired) came out with a massive 570 page judgement (Copy of Judgement available here) upholding the trial court judgement. The judgement of the Karantaka High Court was a blatantly erroneous judgement which said “Accused are guilty of disproportionate asset but if we add the value of all the assets, the excess of assets over known source of income is only Rs 2.82 crores which is less than 10% of the known sources and hence does not warrant punishment”.

In arriving at this total of Rs 2.82 crores, the Judge had made a totalling mistake which was in the same judgement copy and hence his conclusion was comical. The correct addition would increase the value of excess assets to over Rs 15 crores. Hence the judgement could have been over turned at a glance as something which prima facie was erroneous and in fact suggested some malafide inference on the part of the soon to retire Judge.

Now the Supreme Court has arrived at the disproportionate assets could be around 211% and that is the order of the error that the Karnataka High Court judge committed and based on which acquitted the accused.

However the erroneous judgement gave enough room for J Jayalalitha to spend her last days as the CM and the justice has now caught up with the co-accused.

At last the truth has prevailed.

Though this case has no relation to the Cyber Law issues that we normally discuss here, as a person who spent over 25 years in Tamil Nadu, the undersigned was unhappy with the state of affairs prevailing in the State and hence this judgement now comes as a great relief.

I now wish that Governance returns to Tamil Nadu and OPS would be allowed to run his Government without the VSK camp creating more hurdles. If however, VSK camp decides to continue its fight, DMK will become the largest party in the Assembly but in a situation where no body will be able to claim majority. Then we may see President Rule in the State.

I hope Mr OPS will not be content at getting back his CM chair but order a proper probe into the mystery around the death of Ms Jayalalitha. This will bring out the fraudulent use of the concept of “Privacy of Health Information” by Apollo Hospital authorities and peopel sorrounding Ms Sasikala. This is important from the point of view of defining the “Rights of the Kith and Kin as well as the general public” to know the health information of an individual in certain circumstances. Proper checks and balances will have to be codified into the new law on Health Care Data Security and Privacy which the Central Government is in the process of writing. (See www.hdpsa.in).

I also wish that the Supreme Court/Constitution will in future not allow a non member of a house to be appointed as a CM/PM and make it mandatory that a leader of legislatory party should also be a member. This will prevent some of the anomalies which we see in such circumstances. The present system of “I have the letter of support and therefore I am the CM” situation should go. The “Composite Confidence vote” could be made mandatory in all such cases rather than calling the person with the largest number of supporters to be sworn in immediately as it is being suggested now as a constitutional requirement.

Tamil Nadu should also ensure that its police force is not overtly political as it is at present where it some times appears to blindly support the ruling dispensation as was the case in the recent months.

I also wish that Supreme Court censures the high court judge who gave out the erroneous judgement which was not an error of judgement on any point of law or even facts. It was an error of arithmetic totalling of a few figures which should have been corrected much earlier and probably by a suo moto action by Karnataka High Court itself without a need for the appeal. If it was not for the persistence of Mr B.V. Acharya the public prosecutor, the Karnataka Government could have even failed to appeal the erroneous judgement in which case the truth would have been buried for ever.

Let’s wait and watch how things turn out.

Naavi

For a long time, Infosys has been a well respected corporate entity. Even when it faced business difficulties it never lost its respect amongst the Indian public. However, the recent controversy involving payment of a severance pay of $868250/- to Mr David Kennedy, former Chief Compliance official, (Refer article here) immediately after paying R 17.92 crores to another executive Rajiv Bansal who left recently as CFO (See article here) .

In a discussion on TV, Mr Narayana Murthy who has raised a serious objection to the payment of high severance pay to senior executives leaving the company indicated that the reason why the Board seems to have made the payment of severance pay to a person who left voluntarily immediately after a good pay hike could be because he had access to valuable confidential information. It also means that if the money had not been paid, there was a risk of sensitive confidential information about the Company being made public to the detriment of the business interests of the Company.

This statement of Mr Narayana Murthy has opened a legal issue that there was apparently an ulterior reason why such large severance pay was paid. If there was any threat that the information would be leaked, then it would have amounted to “Black Mail” and criminal action could have been taken on the outgoing employees. If they had not demanded but the company was gracious enough to pay the large severance pay, it prima facie opens the possibility that this was “hush money” paid to ensure that these people keep their mouths shut. If so what they could have revealed could be considered as damaging to the members of the Board or to the CEO.

Shareholders of the Company now have a ground to urge action by Company Law Board to make an enquiry on the incident and try to get proper clarification from the management.

While the Company may justify its action as a “Contract” negotiated with the “Outgoing employee”, there is a serious doubt as to the motives behind the decision and it is likely to leave a severe dent on the share holder confidence on the Company and its management.

Even SEBI and Stock Exchanges may issue notices to the Company to disclose the details of the Board decision which approved the severance pay and the logic for determining the quantum.

Naavi