It has been an observation that Cyber Criminals try to target such destinations where the possibility of reward would be high. The recent attack on Cognizant through a ransomware called Maze indicates that despite the Company being well informed about Cyber threats and probably well equipped with experts to guide the Information Security aspects in the Company, it could be successfully compromised by the attackers. It could be due to the persistent attacks on a large number of employees through phishing e-mails and probably using the Work From Home situation which could have diluted the security measures that this attack was made possible.
It is understood that the Maze users have a history of demanding ransom upto US $6 million (Rs 42 crores) and also disclose upto 700 MB of confidential data of a company in the past. So Cognizant would not escape easily if they chose to pay a ransom which could be of the order of US $10 million (Rs 70 crores). And this has to be paid in the form of Bitcoins which means that Cognizant has to invest in black money to the extent of Rs 70 crores. The share holders of Cognizant can object to the use of company resources for this purpose. It is possible that Cognizant may have some coverage of Cyber Insurance but whether it will apply to the payment of extortion arising due to the negligence of the company and if so to what extent is not known.
Further if the data that has been lost relates to personal data of EU countries, the company has to also face the GDPR fines which could be also debilitating. If the personal data lost includes Indian citizens or Indian companies, there could be action against th company through local courts. The company is fortunate that the Personal Data Protection Act is still not in place and like the Breach Candy hospital, this major data breach will go unpunished under Indian law. Though CERT-In may send a notice, it is unlikely to take any action an the company may relatively face less trouble from Indian regulators than from the EU GDPR authorities from multiple countries.
It is regrettable that large company like Cognizant should have fallen to the malware and it will take some time to understand what really went wrong.
For the time being we would like to look at another dimension of the fraud and in particular how the inaction from the Union Home Ministry under Mr Amit Shah has contributed to this attack and will continue to encourage more such attacks.
Recently the MHA stepped into the shoes of MeitY and gave a security advisory on the use of Zoom video conferencing software. Though the advisory was meant for Government department, it was released as a PIB press note giving an opportunity to the ignorant media persons shouting that “MHA had declared Zoom as Unsafe”. As a result many members in the public including companies might have dropped Zoom and moved to more vulnerable tools.
However, MHA has so far not opened its mouth on the issue of “Bitcoins” and when a strange Supreme Court judgement came out indicating restoring of Bitcoin Exchanges, neither the Finance Ministry under Mrs Nirmala Sitharaman, nor the Home Ministry under Mr Amit Shah nor the MeitY under Mr Ravishankar Prasad, took interest in filing a review of the faulty decision .
Every body seems to be happy that the Supreme Court has taken the responsibility to give a sense of approval to Bitcoins on its shoulders and the industry can make hay while the sun shines by converting the legitimate white money in the country to digital black wealth in the form of Bitcoins and other Crypto currencies.
So far we were considering that Mr Amit Shah could be relied upon when national security is at stake and since Bitcoin is the currency of the criminals and terrorists, he would take steps to ensure that its acceptability as a currency for settlement of financial transactions would be recognized as a national security risk. This hope has been belied. Unfortunately he and his department has displayed no urgency in this matter while they rushed to give a premature advisory in the case of Zoom.
It is well known that to prevent a crime, the ability of the criminals to benefit from the crime has to be stopped. So if crimes like Cognizant attacks have to be reduced, it should be made difficult for the criminals to benefit by collecting the ransom in Bitcoins.
The first step for the MHA is therefore to take steps to bring out an ordinance to ban Crypto Currencies forthwith so that the Ransom ware distributors are choked of the reaping financial rewards arising out of their crime.
Secondly, MHA should issue a notice to Cognizant not to pay the ransom since it would encourage similar attacks on Indian companies and also result in a Black Money transaction of an amount equal to the ransom.
I hope Mr Amit Shah is able to understand the long term damage that is being made to the Indian national fabric by allowing Bitcoins to continue to exist.
I request Mr Shah not to accept any view from his department that suggests that “Supreme Court has held Bitcoin as Valid”. Supreme Court has actually not validated Bitcoin or Crypto Currency. On the other hands, the three judges have delivered a cleverly constructed judgement like a Bollywood story so that without telling that Crypto Currency is a valid currency in India, they have created a false impression to let the industry benefit fraudulently.
The RBI and the Finance Ministry should have come up with an amended Circular to re introduce the ban on Crypto Exchanges and the MeitY should have come up with the law on banning Crypto currency which is already in draft stage. But all the three wings of administration have remained silent or have been silenced by the power of crypto currency corruption.
If Mr Amit Shah along with Mr Narendra Modi are the last repositories of honesty and lack of corruption in India, they should make moves to bring a ban on Crypto currencies immediately.
There is no need for the Government to wait for the current Covid 19 crisis to be over before taking action in this regard since this is the time when more such attacks will happen on other organizations since the “Work From Home” situation has exposed most companies to the risk of malware from the home environment jumping into corporate networks.
Stopping ransomware attacks is therefore a Covid priority. If Stopping Bitcoin circulation as a currency relied upon by the criminals is a step in this direction, this is also a Covid priority.
If the MHA, Meity, MOF and RBI are not collectively deaf, I suppose they will listen to this appeal for ban on Crypto currency.
Naavi
