Bride asks for entrance fee from guests to make up for expenses

New Delhi, Jul 18: India's national cybersecurity agency CERT-in, has warned people of credit card skimming spreading across the world through e-commerce platforms.

Attackers are typically targeting e-commerce sites because of their wide presence, popularity and the environment LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP), the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) said in a notice on Thursday.

Recently, attackers targeted sites which were hosted on Microsoft's IIS server running with the ASP.NET web application framework, it said.

Some of the sites affected by the attack were found to be running ASP.NET version 4.0.30319, which is no longer officially supported by Microsoft and may contain multiple vulnerabilities, CERT-In said.

The notice also included a list of best practices for website developers including the use of the latest version of ASP.NET web framework, IIS web server and database server.

The advisory is based on research by Malwarebytes which found that this skimming campaign likely began sometime in April this year.

Credit card skimming has become a popular activity for cybercriminals over the past few years, and the increase in online shopping during the pandemic means additional business for them, too, Malwarebytes said in a blog post, adding that attackers do not need to limit themselves to the most popular e-commerce platforms.

Researchers from global cybersecurity and anti-virus brand Kaspersky had warned in December last year that more cybercriminal groups will target online payment processing systems in 2020. 

It said that over the past couple of years, so-called JS-skimming (the method of stealing of payment card data from online stores), has gained immense popularity among attackers. 

Kaspersky researchers in their report said they are currently aware of at least 10 different actors involved in these type of attacks.

Their number will continue to grow during the next year, the report said, adding that the most dangerous attacks will be on companies that provide services such as e-commerce as-a-service, which will lead to the compromise of thousands of companies.

The US space agency has thrown open a challenge to win over Rs 26 lakh, calling the global community to send novel design concepts for compact toilets that can operate in both microgravity and lunar gravity.

NASA is preparing for return to the Moon and innumerable activities to equip, shelter, and otherwise support future astronauts are underway.

The astronauts will be eating and drinking, and subsequently urinating and defecating in microgravity and lunar gravity.

NASA said that while astronauts are in the cabin and out of their spacesuits, they will need a toilet that has all the same capabilities as ones here on Earth.

The public designs for space toilet may be adapted for use in the Artemis lunar landers that take humans back to the Moon.

"Although space toilets already exist and are in use (at the International Space Station, for example), they are designed for microgravity only," the US space agency said in a statement.

NASA's Human Landing System Programme is looking for a next-generation device that is smaller, more efficient, and capable of working in both microgravity and lunar gravity.

The new NASA challenge includes a Technical category and Junior category and the last date to send designs is August 17.

NASA's Artemis Moon mission will land the first woman and next man on the lunar surface by 2024.

The Artemis programme is part of America's broader Moon to Mars exploration approach, in which astronauts will explore the Moon and experience gained there to enable humanity's next giant leap, sending humans to Mars.

As millions of people get hooked to online dating platforms, their proliferation has led to online romance scams becoming a modern form of fraud that have spread in several societies along with the development of social media like Facebook Dating, warn researchers.

For example, extra-marital dating app Gleeden has crossed 10 lakh users in India in COVID-19 times while dating apps like Tinder and Bumble have gained immense popularity.

According to researchers from University of Siena and Scotte University Hospital led by Dr Andrea Pozza, via a fictitious Internet profile, the scammer develops a romantic relationship with the victim for 6-8 months, building a deep emotional bond to extort economic resources in a manipulative dynamic.

"There are two notable features: on the one hand, the double trauma of losing money and a relationship, on the other, the victim's shame upon discovery of the scam, an aspect that might lead to underestimation of the number of cases," the authors wrote in a paper published in the journal Clinical Practice & Epidemiology in Mental Health.

Around 1,400 dating sites/chats have been created over the last decade in North America alone. In the UK, 23 per cent of Internet users have met someone online with whom they had a romantic relationship for a certain period and even 6 per cent of married couples met through the web.

"The online dating industry has given rise to new forms of pathologies and crime, said the authors.

The results showed that 63 per cent of social media users and 3 per cent of the general population reported having been a victim at least once.

Women, middle-aged people, and individuals with higher tendencies to anxiety, romantic idealization of affective relations, impulsiveness and susceptibility to relational addiction are at higher risk of being victims of the scam.

Online romance scams are, in other words, relationships constructed through websites for the purpose of deceiving unsuspecting victims in order to extort money from them.

The scammer always acts empathetically and attempts to create the impression in the victim that the two are perfectly synced in their shared view of life.

"The declarations of the scammer become increasingly affectionate and according to some authors, a declaration of love is made within two weeks from initial contact," the study elaborated.

After this hookup phase, the scammer starts talking about the possibility of actually meeting up, which will be postponed several times due to apparently urgent problems or desperate situations such as accidents, deaths, surgeries or sudden hospitalizations for which the unwitting victim will be manipulated into sending money to cover the momentary emergency.

Using the strategy of "testing-the-water", the scammer asks the victim for small gifts, usually to ensure the continuance of the relationship, such as a webcam, which, if successful, leads to increasingly expensive gifts up to large sums of money.

When the money arrives from the victim, the scammer proposes a new encounter.

The request for money can also be made to cover the travel costs involved in the illusory meeting. In this phase, the victim may start having second thoughts or showing doubt about the intentions of the partner and gradually decide to break off the relationship.

"In other cases, the fraudulent relationship continues or even reinforces itself as the victim, under the influence of ambivalent emotions of ardor and fear of abandonment and deception, denies or rationalizes doubts to manage their feelings," said the study.

In some cases, the scammer may ask the victim to send intimate body photos that will be used as a sort of implicit blackmail to further bind the victim to the scammer.

Once the scam is discovered, the emotional reaction of the victim may go through various phases: feelings of shock, anger or shame, the perception of having been emotionally violated (a kind of emotional rape), loss of trust in people, a sensation of disgust towards oneself or the perpetrator of the crime and a feeling of mourning.

"Understanding the psychological characteristics of victims and scammers will allow at-risk personality profiles to be identified and prevention strategies to be developed," the authors suggested.