Come October 14 and you will be unable to chat in MSN messenger, Microsoft’s chat services. Many in India and in some 30 odd countries will find this harsh. Microsoft claims that the reason for the move is to reduce the criminal solicitation of children through online discussions. Only a select few countries are lucky enough to continue to have access to these services, for reasons best known to the company. But even there some form of checks and balances are being proposed. While Microsoft has made much of the fact that it is helping to fight a social problem, it also has a commercial agenda — of doing away with a vast number of gratis users of the service. This is a clean-up as well as organising job. Just a couple of days before this announcement, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had mentioned in an address that thieves, con artists, terrorists and hackers were attacking his company and this was the new challenge to innovation. He also mentioned that the major focus of the giant is on shield technology, having admitted that its Trustworthy Computing Initiative had failed to deliver results. Microsoft’s decision is one of the first steps towards addressing cyber security concerns. Its responsibility in this direction as a leading software manufacturer is being questioned in many quarters, both in industry and government. A recent report of security experts criticised the company for its software writing quality. This also comes at a time when there are a few instances of new flaws emerging in the various versions of the Windows operating system, which hackers have taken advantage of. Last August, the Blaster worm shook PCs across the world, and even affected the operations of banks and offices. The company is also seriously confronted with the issue of spams forcing their way into numerous Hotmail user mailboxes. The inference is very clear. The age of controlling the internet has begun. More and more networks are getting secured, internet security companies are doing brisk business and the appeal to keep security concerns in mind is no longer falling on deaf ears. At the same time, legal measures are being devised nationally with criminal and civil laws incorporating a cyber dimension. But despite all this, there is slow progress on a global legal regime emerging. Given the transnational nature of the crimes being committed, this is a major missing link. Issues like online pornography and paedophilic abuse are yet to be addressed globally. Research, on the other hand, is going on in full swing to make the internet safer. For instance, PlanetLab is progressing on varied research projects for new web-based applications, with security as a major focus. Reputed universities, corporations and smaller interest groups are participating in hundreds of projects. Take, for instance, Netbait and CoDeeN — two security related projects. The former is an Intel-led project that is targeting the spread of viruses. The latter, being developed at the Princeton University, addresses the issue of overloading of data on web servers and thus would save the network from crashing or having denial of service attacks. Many Indians and a couple of institutions based in India are also involved. The concept of managed security services has also grown very popular and cyber surveillance and forensics have become active tools for many international enforcement agencies. Many of the police forces are being trained to address internet related issues. Computer Emergency Response teams (CERTS) have been formed nationally to deal with the situation and the first Indian CERT has also begun its test run. Large corporations are employing security companies to do real time monitoring of their networks and alert them on unwanted traffic or online behaviour. To some extent these services have been successful. But controlling society at large through such services is just not possible. Another dimension to the whole issue is the move to hold vendor companies accountable for their software. This move is being presently driven strongly in the US by five federal agencies led by the Energy Department and intruder-free software is being mooted. A draft agreement to this effect has already been signed in California recently. The huge stakes involved could lead to a positive outcome and it would, no doubt, benefit not just industry but ordinary consumers. But the problem will not, and cannot, be solved by regulations or such technological measures. There are bound to be online marauders, simply because it is not possible to stop all activity of this kind in a vast space generating some billions of terabytes every moment. There is also the issue of regulations not being able to stop online behaviour. China’s case is very clear. In spite of stringent regulations and active censoring, people still rush to the net. Today the internet is a free roaming ground for thrill seekers, hackers and terrorists alike and they are free to do whatever they want until catastrophe strikes and there is serious drive to nab them.
