Scared about Tansacting Online !!!

Transacting online is always a point of insecurity and fear, although you are committed to have every bit of your transaction details secured and kept confidential. This is almost every time, we are promised by every company on this earth. People are always in a big dilemma to judge between pain to visit banks or pay utility bills personally and sitting comfortably in the house and transferring money or paying all the bills online.

Today we are living in a jet edged society, where everything we do becomes a style statement. Just because to live up to the expectations of the society, we end up inclining more towards online mode of payment than going personally and making it, but I can bet, everyone has a question in mind, “how much my money is secure in this?” and “what happens if the connectivity is lost in between my transaction?”

With an exponential growth in the cyber crimes in the space and with the known philosophy of attaining unachievable 100% security, individuals or corporate end up installing all sorts of defensive layers of security, making their network more and more complex. The idea of “being secured” cannot be achieved by just enhancing the layers of security but by increasing the awareness of it.

Let me shed some light on the most destructive and undetected attack till date. This is the most dreaded when it comes on it applications on banking sites. Most of the banking crimes or online frauds are the outcome of this attack. This attack exploits the trust a user has on his/her browser and injects and activates malicious codes using phished pages.

This type of attack is called “Cross Site Request Forgery” or “CSRF” or “One Click” attack. This attack exploits the HTTP request, and user sends to the target server through its browser. In layman’s term, if you want to have certain amount of money withdrawn from the victim’s bank account, you can do this. You can very well write a code in the website using an “on click” event, so that every time the user clicks the link, a certain amount will be withdrawn from his account and will be deposited the other account.

How it works?

First of all, it is to be understood that this type of request tampering can happen between multiple accounts in the same bank. It cannot work on multiple bank accounts.

Next, we will intercept the bank request and will try to get an online version of the web site code, the reason behind this is that, usually, if you want to change a code and get it reflected in the website, it is not possible using offline code.

Then once we get the online code, then we will find some open links. Open links can be an image link or a button click. Let’s have an example of this, let’s say, I want to make all the users click on an image to go to the next page.

By default there will be a code which will say like this,

<a href src =”next page path”

<img src = “Image source path”></img>

</a>

Now after I intercept this code, I will change the “image source path” into a malicious code like,

<img src=http://bank.domain.com/withdraw?account=victim&amount=100000&for=attacker>

When I load the page with the changed code, it does miracle… every time there is a click happening in this page, automatically an amount is deposited in the attacker’s account, without the knowledge of the victim.

These types of attacks cannot be detected easily because they reside into the backbone of trusted HTTP protocol, which the sites used to load. Since they are not a standalone bunch of code, which could create suspicious but they are the trusted code which cannot be questioned.

How do I know?

It’s being a decade; I am working in the field of detecting and stopping cyber frauds. I often come across many cases of these types. The problem is there is no trace left behind to detect the actual culprit. The maximum anyone can do is to; take a reactive decision in stopping the next attack after the damage has happened. Looking this, I developed a framework which is blended with the coding concepts of a website, which limits anything of this sort.

She called me and disapeared !!

You could hear someone calling you from behind and still can ignore thinking….”Hey, My ears are ringing!!” but what you do when you turn back and got to see someone standing and with a blink, the person disappears.

This happened with me quite a number of times, when I could hear familiar voices calling my name. At first, I used to ignore but then after this day I started to take this seriously. I am in a profession, where it takes considerable amount of travel and usually I do it alone.

It happened, when I was in srilanka for an assignment. My company gave me a big apartment which was opposite to a food joint. Although, I had everything to cook my food, but due to tiredness, I usually skipped cooking. I felt it easy to go down walk few steps and take the food.

I still remember, it was the month of November, very pleasant weather in Colombo. I came out of my apartment and started walking on the road. It was evening and heavy breeze was flowing, I was sort of enjoying the walk. It had been some 20 odd steps I would have taken, I heard someone calling my name.

I could judge, the voice was of a girl, someone I knew but not in touch from a long time. First I thought that, I was hearing voices because of the tiredness. I thought of neglecting that and continued walking. Then soon after, I again the same voice, what surprised me was, even though I was walked some more distance still the pitch of the voice was same. This time I thought of turning back. With great excitement, I turned back and I could see a girl, in an age of 23 – 25 yrs was standing in some distance.

She was clear and was wearing decent clothes and was smiling to me. I started to think whether any chance I met with that girl or chatted with her. Her face was glowing with a light, which made me to see her face clearly. I felt an energy around me which was attracting me like a magnet. I started walking towards her and she was still standing in the same place.

Things were not in my hand and I was not sure even, what was happening to me. Only I wanted to know, how come she and my name. I didn’t knew that by thinking all these, I was walking on the road. Then suddenly a loud car horn broke the possessiveness (that’s what I felt) in me and I realized that I standing right infront of a car. I turned toi see the girl and she was not there. The place didn’t felt like, someone was even standing there from past couple of minutes.

I understood, this cannot be my illusion and there is something happened to me. The feeling didn’t really shook me from inside but yes it got added into the list of my paranormal experiences.

11 point analysis of my marriage!!!

Looking to the fading trust in the institution in marriages and with an increase in broken mariages, I felt the need of analysing my marriage. I am not doing because I feel there is something wrong or I have to tell people how happy I am . But it is to negate the believes people have in their mind and on the brighter side, no one thinks that there wil always be someone who will balance your lifeand share your pain. But remember nothing is ONE WAY..

Worth of Consideration

1.       Firendship comes first: First thing people need to understand that things don’t change even you are married. A couple should treat each other as FRIENDS and then as a couple. There are some things which we are comfortable in sharing as friends rather than as a couple.

2.       Individuality should remain: This is very important, a couple needs to understand. Before we are a couple, we are two individual. One should not think of giving the indivituality just because, now we are married. One should realize that identity of one is equally important to ba a part of a family.

3.       Giving Space: Its very important to have both the individual working to live up to the growing demands of the society. Gone are the days, when in a family of 4 only 1 used to be earning and others used to enjoy, especially the girls. Now with the increase in global trend, where working is not only important to earn money,  but also it helps to retain one’s indentity and to retain the life style in the society.  Corporates are moving to a cross-culture where we are working with hetrogenous people, it becomes very important to give space as an individual in a relationship.

4.       Respest each other’s growth: Growth in all the aspects, is respected always and the problem starts, when one person’s growth is faster than the other one. I don’t feel embarrassed to say that this type of thinking is majorly with the males in the relationship. For a successful relationship, both individuals should understand the growth ppotentials of each other and create path for each other. Both of them should respect the growth and encourage each other in achieving the same.

5.       No Place for EGO: Ego comes in a relationship, when people start thinking of “I” or “Me”, instead of “Us” or “We”. Ego playes a vital role in creating clashes in a family or in a relationship. I want to say only one thing that, when we cannot carry love, then how come we can carry ego in us? No relationship can be successful, if any of us has ego inside us. Ego builds up very quickly inside us and when it over powers the loving side of us , one cannot understand.

6.       Express you feelings: I understand that we are so much busy with out hectic lives that, we don’t have time to even sit and have a pleasant food. But how much time it takes for you to pick up your phone, dial a number and tell “ I love you “ or “I miss you”, these are some magical words, which makes the other person feel special. This is important in a relationship, One should not miss these small moments to surprise your other half. Small surprises still works , for keeping the excitement in one’s life. Surprises need not to be a big one everytime,  but small gesture showing your true feelings can add lot of spice.

7.       She / He fought with me, why I should say “Sorry”:  This is very pecular problem with the couples these days that no one wants to bend down to end up the fight. This is where again an EGO is playing its game. Please remember, small fights are indeed needed to retain the spice of the life, but along with that, it should not be stretched. Nothing remains good when it is stretched.

8.       Work should remain in office: We have a common quatlity, to show how much sincere we are towards our work, by bringing all the pending works in home. We are so engrossed in proving ourselves that we forget that there is another world outside the office, where someone wants to spend some quality time with us. No one is so much busy in their life that they cannot even take out little time for their family or loved ones. Pretending to be busy is equivalent of neglecting someone, then why to complain when you also get the same.

9.       Marriage is a commitment not a burden: Today people don’t want to their relationship into marriage. They don’t want to take responsibilities for their whole life. Having this kind of feeling is natural because we are living in a society, which itself has lost hopes from marriage. Today marriages are nothing but a rituals which needs to be performaed, for the sake of the parants. But when it is looked into the individual level, a feeling of burden is always there. So I say , it is very important for a couple to spend good quality time with each other and treat as a friend, will help the couples to enter or build a solid and grounded relationship.

10.   Respect and Trust: Respect and Trust are two basic building blocks of a loving relationship. Love grows in a relationship when couples have love and respect for themselves. One cannot expect love without these two spices. Once you star respecting each other then autometically, you will trust ecah other. Openness comes with respect and trust. Couples need to be open to each other. Hiding things with a fear of losing each other creates a never ending gap in a couple. Psychologically people have the tendency to talk of good things and hide the bad ones. One should be always open with their loved ones regarding their past, problems. It is is worth to remember that , “Even if no one can help you with you with your problems, but sharing with your loved ones, makes you feel light”. Without Respect and Trust, no relationship can be lived happly. I am not saying to have a blind trust,  but one should show sufficient trust when it is required.

11.   Remember the 7 promises: Promises made at the time of marriage should be always remembered and our action should be towards the fulfillment of those promises. This is an inherent expectation in a relationship that both of the better halves should atleast remember the promises made infront of the gods, to each other. You can always added promised  but should make a point to fulfill the promises.

I have personally implemented all these in my life and happily enjoying the feeling of it. Its being 7 glorious of our marriage and we havent forgot that we met because we were destined to meet. But to be happy, there is no destiny. Its on us how we frame our life. Indeed, marriage brings lot of changes in one’s life, and the exciting part is to accept and react to those changes. I would not say, things are easy for everyone,  but I believe they are not even hard to try.