Saturday, February 23, 2008

Should Spoofing be part of cyber crime law?

Faking the sending address of a transmission in order to gain illegal entry into a secure system is called spoofing or creating fake responses or signals in order to keep a session active and prevent timeouts.

Spoofing is categorized into following types
IP
ARP
MAC
DNS
E-mail
IP Spoofing
In IP spoofing, an attacker gains unauthorized access to a computer or a network by making it appear that a malicious message has come from a trusted machine by “spoofing” the IP address of that machine.

ARP Spoofing
The principle of ARP spoofing is to send fake, or 'spoofed', ARP messages to an Ethernet LAN. Generally, the aim is to associate the attacker's MAC address with the IP address of another node (such as the default gateway).

DNS Spoofing
DNS Spoofing is the art of making a DNS entry to point to an another IP than it would be supposed to point to.

E-mail Spoofing
The unauthorized use of a third-party domain name as the sender's name in an e-mail message. Most often used by spammers, spoofing the name of a popular retailer or organization entices the recipient to read the full message.

Mac Spoofing
MAC Address Spoofing to alter the manufacturer-assigned MAC address to a desired value.

Spoofing is defined as a part of cyber crime. According to the bill for the prevention of cyber crime
Whoever establishes a website, or sends an electronic message with a counterfeit
source intended to be believed by the recipient or visitor or its electronic system to be an authentic
source with intent to gain unauthorized access or obtain valuable information which later can be
used for any unlawful purposes commits the offence of spooling.
(2) Whoever commits the offence of spooling specified in sub-section (1) shall be punished with
imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with
both
.”

In my opinion spoofing should not be the part of cyber crimes. First of all if spoofing is banned then privacy of a user will be affected.For example if mac spoofing is not allowed
· Then Many organizations track wired or wireless network users via their MAC Addresses.In addition, there are more and more Wireless connections available these days, and wireless network use MAC Addresses to communicate.Build true Stand-by (offline) systems with the exact same ComputerName, IP, and MAC address as the Primary Systems. If Stand-by systems should be put online, No ARP table refresh is necessary, which eliminates extra downtime. Some online Game Players (Gamers) require changing the MAC addresses to fix IP problems for some reason. Similarly there are certain situations where you need to hide your identity. It is also used to Troubleshoot system problems and Test network management tools and also for Testing incident response procedures on simulated network problems.E-mail spoofing is used by users who want to hide their identity and the reason may mot be spamming .

Also the law about the spoofing is not clear. As said by Mr Zahid Jamil the definitions are incomplete and vague. He has also given the example of an innocent person caught by the government due to cyber stalking. The law needs to be changed and clear in many aspects. It needs to be designed in such a way that only criminal is caught and not the innocent one.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Review on the chapter "Free" from book "The future of Ideas"

The Future of Ideas: (2001) is a book by Lawrence Lessig, a professor of law at Stanford Law School, who is well known as a critic of the extension of the copyright term in US.
In The Future of Ideas, Lawrence Lessig explains that the Internet revolution has come and how the revolution has produced a counterrevolution of potentially devastating power and effect. Creativity was once flourished but now copyright and patent laws are wasting the creativity and progress.


In this chapter “Free” the writer firstly discussed that how the copyrights impede creativity. He gave certain examples to show that many of the creative work was wasted because someone claimed that piece of art of some part or that work as their own. And people are not giving importance to this problem. This blindness will harm the environment of innovation.
While copyright helps artists get rewarded for their work, he warns that a copyright regime that is too strict and grants copyright for too long a period of time can destroy innovation, as the future always builds on the past.
He then discussed that how the free resources available to everybody on the internet had helped an individual. Digital technology could enable an extraordinary range of ordinary people to become part of a creative process and to move from the life of a consumer of music, film, art, and commerce to a life where one can individually and collectively participate in making something new and is a great opportunity for each and every individual. But the copyrights affect commercial as well as noncommercial activities, the arts as well as the sciences. The blog writers, digital artists and music mixers are strictly consumers of Internet services because they have every resource available on the internet for their use.
He then described that every society has resources that are free and resources that are controlled. Free resources are those available for the taking. Controlled resources are those for which the permission of someone is needed before the resource can be used. According to the writer a resource is “free” if
(1) One can use it without the permission of anyone else
(2) The permission one needs is granted neutrally
The resources cost money to produce while production is different from consumption. Its access may be free of cost n available to everybody n might need payment. But if all the resources will be free then it will create a problem for the writers art workers for their work will never be rewarded.


In the end he introduced the concept to the notion of the commons and then introduced three contexts where resources in the Internet are held in common. Then consider a parallel environment for innovation and creativity in real space. The argument of the third and final part of this book is that the environment of the Internet is now changing. Both legal and technical features that originally created this environment of free creativity are now being changed. They are being changed in ways that will reintroduce the very barriers that the Internet originally removed.