The Indian budget every year has always been an eagerly awaited event. For many decades, the best minds in economics, finance, tax, business and industry throng the media house to analyze the provisions shared by the Financial Minister.
Sometimes major events completely disconnected may be data points for the plans of the different powers around the world. The challenge is to discern what purpose they serve? More critically, what are we moving towards?
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
Is going cashless a good thing? Some think so and logic tells us that it will dent black money and corruption in a big way. But is it safe for ordinary people?
Using debit and credit cards is fraught with a lot of danger.
In a research paper titled Does The Online Card Payment Landscape Unwittingly Facilitate Fraud? , researchers from the University of Newcastle have discussed a scary way to hack into credit cards based on the Visa system of payment. Using what is known as the Distributed Guessing Attack, the hackers can get your credit card info in – just 6 seconds flat!
The steps are simple and take seconds to process for a well targeted software.
Attackers gets his/her to-be-hacked credit card numbers from black-market (for less than a dollar each!). Or he could hack into a smartphone with Near-field communication (NFC) reader.
Hackers takes the 16 digit card number and forces the 3-digit card verifictaion value (CVV) and expiration date to sites of hundreds of retailers simultaneously using web bots. CVV takes 1000 guesses and expiration date is much easier at 60 attempts!
Finally the bots are used to get the address, if it is needed.
The entire time? 6 seconds! Here it is in a video:
This is scary for anyone. But it gets scarier when we know that in India millions – close to billions – will go cashless very soon. How will one secure himself/herself from this easy hack? Specially when Pakistanis are waiting to pounce on opportunities to screw with the economic systems in India?
For one, do NOT use the Visa card system. Mastercard based credit cars are much more secure in that Mastercard locks a card if anyone tries to guess/force card details multiple times. Even tried across multiple websites!
The Indian budget every year has always been an eagerly awaited event. For many decades, the best minds in economics, finance, tax, business and industry throng the media house to analyze the provisions shared by the Financial Minister.
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
This visit of India left me with many questions. Many observations and inputs from different people and sections. Food for thought that I have tried to contemplate on and make sense of. Sharing all that with you.
When you analyze the last 60 years of the economic miracles of Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia versus the continued impoverished Indian economy, you get very interesting lessons. Can Indians have the wherewithal in them to do in one generation so that the coming generations may rise?
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