Rotarians learn about the dark side of the internet
Rohas Nagpal
Rohas Nagpal is a lawyer by qualification, a cyber crime investigator by profession, a hacker at heart and a programmer by passion. He advises corporates, law firms, and law enforcement agencies on issues relating to Technology Law, Cyber Crime Investigation, Information Warfare and Cyber Terrorism. He has assisted the Government of India in drafting rules and regulations under the Information Technology Act. Nagpal has authored several books in digital forensic investigation, technology law and financial law. He is the author of the Cyber Crime Investigation Manual. He has also authored Cyber Crime & Digital Evidence published by Asian School of Cyber Laws.
Nagpal started by asking Rotarians how much they really know of what happens on the internet. He said, “Do you think the sale of narcotics has changed with technology today? The answer is, yes it has. If you were to buy LSD or ecstasy, they are sold in the form of books. It begins like this—you would go to a coffee store nearby, where you meet the kid who is selling it to you. The kid has an ipad, he will tell you how much to pay him using Bitcoins. Once you transfer the amount, a book gets delivered to you through a regular e-commerce service. You are informed which page of the book is to be cut out and put on your tongue and as soon as you do it, the drug takes effect. These chemical drugs are colourless, odourless and tasteless. Police dogs cannot detect it and when you paint it on a piece of paper, it is transparent. So unless you know the page number, you will end up eating a whole book. The interesting part is that today, this sale is being done by children in the age group of 15 to 17!”
He proceeded to explain the different types of internet there are to Rotarians. He said, “Illegal trading of drugs today happens online, but not on the internet that you and I are familiar with. Most people would say there is only one kind of internet, but there are known to be seven different types of internet in the world. The first and common one that we use is the public internet. The second one is the Dark Web or the Hidden Web and can be accessed through a technology called Tor, or the Onion Router, created by the American Navy. You need to download a specific browser and only then can you access this technology. Ninety nine per cent of the material on the Hidden Web is illegal content, for example, narcotic and weapon sales. You can buy an unmanned aerial vehicle, a bazooka and many other arms. If you are wondering how you can receive these weapons, it gets delivered to your house in Lego boxes. Over a period of 12 months, you will receive Lego boxes and each would contain parts that you can piece together to create the bazooka.”
Nagpal then moved on to ATM card cloning. “Last year in Goa, there was a conference attended by more than four thousand people who were either dealers or buyers in cloning devices for all kinds of credit and debit cards. Another very interested development is the stored value card where the card contains the money. It’s not a debit or credit card that connects to your bank but a card that holds your money and electronic pick-pocketing followed. These are some of the simpler ways in which it can be done.
“In addition to this, there are five more. The others are Crypto; Dot Drugs, exclusively for the global drug cartel; Dot Guns, only used by the arms traders of the world and three others who nobody really knows much about. These websites look like normal e-commerce websites, except that they are selling products like stolen credit cards, superdollars, illegal drugs or weapons and sometimes, services; hacking and murder services. I happen to know so much about this because I was recently approached by an international software development company that wanted me to do a certain kind of encryption for them that I specialise in. I developed that for them and months later, I came to know that they represented the Columbian drug mafia which is currently setting up a global network of franchisees, selling drugs through kids with ipads. The realised that trying to sell drugs in every part of the world is not feasible for them, so instead of that, they appoint 16-year-old kids with ipads in every city of the world. This is what they were working on and their online systems are ready and active now. That’s the way the illegal mafia is using technology far more than people legally use it.”