Virus of cyber kind: Only behavioural change can ensure digital security

Between February and March, there was a 12 per cent increase in the number of devices in India that received at least one threat

A few days ago, Meena Bose (name changed), a young media professional, received an email from someone claiming to have hacked into her laptop camera. He demanded she send $1,000 to him, failing which he’d share videos he had recorded from her camera to the contacts in her email directory. She had 24 hours to pay up. Bose would have ignored the email if the hacker hadn’t correctly guessed an often-used password and told her about it.
 

She reached out to Anand Prakash, a Bengaluru-based white-hat hacker who runs AppSecure, a cybersecurity company. “I immediately knew the threat was fake