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."
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.