Cyber crime is on the rise with over 2344 Indian websites have been
broken into by cyber thieves in the first five months of this year
as compared to 5200 that were defaced during the entire year 2006.

The period between, January 1 to May 15 this year witnessed 2344
breach of cyber security while in July, the figure was 38, a report
of Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) said.

Phishers or hackers attempt to fraudulently acquire sensitive
information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by
masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.

As per the industry figures, over 119 cases involving phishing
attacks have been registered so far.

Of the total number of sites that were hacked and defaced in this
five months of 2007, an overwhelming majority were in the '.com'
domain (1194 incidents), while 649 incidents occurred within
the '.in' domain. As many as 231 defacement incidents were recorded
in the '.org' domain while the '.net' and '.info' domains accounted
for 125 and 135 incidents, respectively.

"Phishing incidents cannot be eliminated completely but FIRs should
be filed by the victim organisation or institution and it should be
made a penal offence, Cyber law expert, Supreme court lawyer Pavan
Duggal said.

Among the different sectors, E-Commerce sector reported largest
number of phishing attacks in 2006, accounting for 76 per cent. The
other most targetted area is Financial Services which accounts for
24 per cent.

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