America and China More Peaceful than India

The world has become more peaceful for the first time since 2009, says the 2012 Global Peace Index, a study conducted by Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP). India's rank slipped to 142 in comparison with 137 last year. Unites States of America was ranked 88 while China was ranked 89 in the GPI.

 
The Global Peace Index for 158 countries composed of 23 indicators, ranging from measures of civil unrest and crime to military spending, involvement in armed conflict and ties with neighbors. The survey gauged three broad themes, namely the level of safety and security in society, the extent of domestic or international conflict and the degree of militarization.

 
Iceland is the most peaceful country in the world, followed by Denmark and New Zealand. Canada takes the fourth position on the Global Peace Index list while Japan takes the fifth. Somalia remains the world’s least peaceful nation. Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq and Democratic Republic of Congo round up the bottom five. Israel and Pakistan were also ranked among one of the least peaceful nations.

 
The study also noted that Saarc nations like Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh are more peaceful than India. The survey founder Steve Killelea, an Australian entrepreneur said that in the past 12 months India's relation with its neighbors has improved. He added that "We expect this to continue for betterment of the entire region," as reported by TOI.

As per regions, Asia Pacific has an overall score improved by the largest extent from last year and included three of the top five risers. Sub-Saharan Africa is not the least peaceful region for the first time and has steadily increased levels of peacefulness since 2007. Middle East and North Africa were noted to be the least peaceful region, reflecting the upheaval and instability caused by the Arab Spring.

 
Western Europe remains noticeably the most peaceful region with the majority of its countries in the top 20 for the sixth consecutive year. North America showed a slight improvement, continuing a trend since 2007. While Latin America experienced overall gain with 16 of the 23 countries seeing improvements to their GPI score. All regions excluding the Middle East and North Africa saw an improvement in levels of overall peacefulness.

 
The top 5 fallers were noted to be Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Oman and Malawi. Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Bhutan, Guyana and the Philippines were the top 5 risers on the Global Peace index list.

 
There has been a change for the indicators as well. The top three largest improvements were noted for the political terror scale, terrorist acts and military expenditure as a percent of GDP. Improvements were seen in the military sphere, including a decline in military expenditure as a percentage of GDP in 2011, as many countries hit by economic headwinds moved to reduce budget deficits. Six of the world’s top military spenders: Brazil, France, Germany, India, the UK and the U.S., cut their defence budgets in 2011.

India to take steps to protect cyber infrastructure

India is set to take steps to protect itscyber infrastructure and designate agencies for carrying out offensive cyber attacks on other countries. The move comes at a time when proof shows countries launching cyber attacks - not only for intelligence gathering - and many nations describing the attacks as an act of war.

According to sources, the National Security Council(NSC) headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singhwould soon approve the comprehensive plan and designate the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and National Technical Research Organization (NTRO) as agencies for carrying out offensive cyber operations, if necessary. All other intelligence agencies would be authorized to carry out intelligence gathering abroad, but not offensive operations, sources said.

The detailed policy for national cyber infrastructure protection is presently before the NSC awaiting its approval. The policy would identify all government agencies that would have a role in the protection of Indian cyber infrastructure and define their roles.

The move to not just define defensive mechanism but also designate agencies for offensive operations comes as New Delhi tackles repeated waves of cyber intrusions, though all of them are aimed at gathering information from critical networks. But the next stage, of an adversary carrying out offensive cyber attack, of bringing down a power grid, stalling air traffic control systems, or manipulating controls of a dam are now believed to be a real possibility.

Stuxnet, the cyber worm created by US's National Security Agency and Israeli military and specifically targeted at Iran's nuclear enrichment center at Natanz, was found to have infected Indian systems. "It was probably unintentional, but an intentional attack on India's critical infrastructure cannot be ruled out," says a senior official. "We haven't yet seen a cyber attack, but only intelligence gathering. An attack that can debilitate our infrastructure is what we must be prepared for," he said.

CERT-IN (Computer Emergency Response Team India) would be responsible for protection of most of the cyber space, while NTRO would be tasked to protect the critical infrastructure such as important government networks. NTRO would be tasked to create the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIPC), which would be a command-and-control centre for monitoring the critical infrastructure. It would be a round-the-clock centre, providing real time response to cyber security breaches.

The proposal before NSC also envisages creation of sectoral CERTs in order to respond quickly to protect power distribution networks, Air Traffic Controls, traffic networks and other areas that heavily dependent on networked systems, and thus are susceptible to attacks.

The policy suggests that the defence forces would be responsible for their own networks' protection.

NTRO and Intelligence Bureau (IB) would primarily be responsible for security of various government networks. While NTRO would operate through NCIPC, IB would be mainly looking at the physical security of networks. State polices, CBI, NIA etc would be tasked to do follow up action, if any intrusions are detected.

Flame Virus! A Powerful Cyber Weapon Discovered

Bangalore:  A prominent Russian based internet security firm revealed that it had discovered a new and powerful virus that has extraordinary destructive potential, which is being utilized as a "cyberweapon" against several countries.
Kaspersky Lab, producers of largest anti-virus software said that their team of experts has discovered the virus known as “Flame” during an investigation process under the guidance of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The firm said that countries like in Iran and others in the Middle East have been attacked using this spyware virus.
Flame is a data stealing virus that has creeped into thousands of computers across the Middle East for almost five years as part of a sophisticated cyber warfare campaign.
Comments by Israel’s vice premier have hinted that the awful Flame spyware is a product of Israel, as a defensive strategy against Iran's nuclear program which sees it as a mortal Threat reports Economic Times.
Moshe Yaalon told Army Radio on Tuesday, "Whoever sees the Iranian threat as a significant threat is likely to take various steps, including these, to hobble it."
He added, "Israel is blessed with high technology, and we boast tools that open all sorts of opportunities for us."
Roel Schouwenberg, security senior researcher at Kaspersky Lab said that "If Flame went on undiscovered for five years, the only logical conclusion is that there are other operations ongoing that we don't know about."
Researchers at Kaspersky said that they are still not very familiar with Flame and are in the process of understanding how the virus works because of its complex features. Moreover, they have also mentioned that the full significance will not be known until other cyber security firms obtain samples of Flame.
Kaspersky Lab’s research shows that Iran is the most affected country with largest number of infected machines, followed by the Israel/Palestine region, then Sudan and Syria.