Skip to main content

The Trauma of Securing a Code Signing Certificate - The Government of India needs to Intervene against hegemony of MNCs


A boutique Indian cyber security firm (a proprietorship) just went through a nightmarish experience with an MNC when it sought to secure a Code Signing Certificate (CSC). The MNC simply refused to recognise several valid documents issued by the Government of India.

The Indian firm has a GST registration, a MSME registration and has over the last few years continuously offered protection against cyber security threats to over a dozen blue chip firms in the Banking & Financial Services Sector. Most of the firm’s business is repeat business on an annual subscription model.

The firm wrote a small executable which can dig into viruses on hard disks and wanted a secure a code signing certificate in this connection.

The first code signing vendor said that they can only issue a certificate to a company incorporated with the Ministry of Company Affairs and thus rejected the application. Fortunately, no application fee has been paid and the matter ended there.

A second vendor was approached, an application was filed on a website and a fee of approximately US $ 200 paid. Then the nightmare started. The firm received a verification email seeking to know if it were a private limited company. It said that it was a proprietorship, with a GST and MSME registration, and even offered to show the Purchase Orders (POs) from clients in order to prove its legitimacy. However, the vendor was firm and said that it could only issue a certificate to a Private Limited firm. When a refund was sought, there was no reply.

The vendor then said that GST and MSME registrations were not acceptable and sought alternative verification. This involved securing a landline, a certification from the firm’s CA about its existence as a registered and genuine entity, CA’s certification of physical location at the same place as the landline, Aadhar card photocopy (front and back), and also a selfie with the front and back display of the Aadhar card. Further, the firm’s representative was required to be at the landline location to receive a call which proved to be a complication because of the lockdown. Finally, the CA himself had to go through a verification process.

This whole experience highlights the importance of a intervention by the Government of India in the area of code signing certification and a localisation of the same. Otherwise MNCs will end up controlling the process, with the power to even disregard official registrations issued by the Government of India.


source https://www.ehackingnews.com/2020/03/the-trauma-of-securing-code-signing.html
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Information security experts have warned Russians about bonus card fraud schemes.

Fraudsters several thousand times tried to illegally take advantage of discount bonuses of Russians in 2019. Some attackers gained access to customers' personal accounts, and then bought the products using bonuses, said Alexey Sizov, head of the anti-fraud department of the Application Security Systems Center at Jet Infosystems. According to him, a fraudster can register a personal account on a card that was issued to another person. The victim will accumulate points without knowing about the existence of his profile, and the attacker will write off bonuses, said Sizov. The expert added that this is mainly done by novice scammers. According to him, loyalty programs are poorly protected, unlike banking operations. He said that they are estimated at 50 billion rubles ($760 milliard) for the 30 largest retailers. Alexey Fedorov, Chairman of the Business Russia Trade Committee, said that in 2019, the number of bonus and discount thefts "increased significantly."
Post a Comment
Read more

Betting and Gambling Websites under Cyberattack from Chinese Hackers

Since last year's summers, Chinese hackers have been targeting South Asian companies that own online gambling and betting websites. The gambling companies in South Asia have confirmed the hacks, whereas rumors of cyberattacks on betting websites have also emerged from Europe, and the Middle East, however, the rumors are yet to confirm, says the reports of cybersecurity group Trend Micro and Talent-Jump. Cybersecurity experts claim that no money was stolen in these hacks against the gambling websites. However, hackers have stolen source codes and databases. The motive of the attack was not a cybercrime, but rather espionage intended attack to gain intelligence. According to the experts, a group named ' DRBControl ' is responsible for the cyberattack. According to the reports of Trend Micro, the hacking techniques used in this particular cyberattack incident is similar to methods done by Emissary Panda and Winnti. All of these hacking groups are from China that has launc
5 comments
Read more

Provider Volia reported to the cyber police about the intense cyberattacks on the server

Cable provider Volia appealed to the Cyber Police on the fact of fixing a DDoS attack on the Kharkov servers of the company, which has been ongoing since May 31. "For three days, from May 31 to today, the Volia infrastructure in Kharkov is subjected to cyberattacks. At first, they were carried out only on subscriber subsystems, later they switched to telecommunications infrastructure. As a result, more than 100,000 subscribers experienced problems using the Internet, IPTV, multi-screen platform, and digital TV," said the company. In total, the complete lack of access to Volia's services, according to the provider, lasted 12 minutes on May 31, 45 minutes on June 1. There was also an attack on the website volia.com, but it was managed to neutralize. "DDoS attacks were massive and well-organized. The type of attack is UDP flood and channel capacity overflow with the traffic of more than 200 GB. UDP is a protocol used for online streaming services - streaming, te
Post a Comment
Read more