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Black or white?

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE: Tom Cervenka, who is better known among the hacking community as

the Blue Adept, has expressed concern over the growing cases of hacking of

networks and Web sites. Speaking to the press here on Tuesday he said,

"Hacking is fast emerging to be an increasing menace in a scenario where

global markets converge on the Internet. Businesses worldwide are today

realizing the importance of e-security and taking necessary steps to implement

it."

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Cervenka called upon the Indian corporate to recognize the situation and

train their workforce towards implementing it. He is in Bangalore to conduct a

one-day workshop on "Hacking portals and Web sites — prevention and

damage control" to be held at the Taj Westend, Bangalore, on August 24,

2000. The event promises to attract leading corporates, dotcoms and IT companies

in the country.

Cervenka, who is a white hat hacker, is an Internet Security Expert at iCMG

Inc. USA. He has to his credit the achievement of disclosing security loopholes

of a number of high traffic sites including service Web sites like Hotmail,

Yahoo, Excite, Eudora, Lycos and commerce portals like eBay. He started his

career as third party unauthorized software tester. The first security loophole

that he found was in the very popular MS Hotmail. He found that just by

embedding a malicious code in an e-mail the recipient’s user name and password

became transparent to the hacker.

While addressing the media today, Cervenka spoke about the different kinds of

hackers namely White hat, Grey hat and the Black hat hackers and the differences

between them. White hat hacking is where the hacker discloses to the company

responsible for the product all the loopholes he encountered during software

exploration. Black hat hacking is where the hacker keeps his findings to

himself, while Grey hat hacking is what falls in between. Here, certain

loopholes are made public while others are not.

"This widespread industry endorsement of Internet security across the

globe demonstrates the practical and common industry approach to inter-operable

security on the Internet," adds iCMG president and CEO Sunil Dutt Jha.

"To make e-commerce in India a reality we have to secure our transactions

which range from transfer of data to monitory exchange. Hacking is an ever

growing fear in the minds of all Internet users. In the Internet era, e-security

plays a pivotal role in the very existence of the Net.

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