UPDATED 16:18 EDT / AUGUST 30 2011

NEWS

Pakistan Bars Use of VPNs: A Pseudo Solution to A Real Problem?

What would you feel if someone or something sees all your private conversations with friends and relatives every single day? Scared is all that I will be. And the amount of stress and carefulness would increase having the idea of government authorities watching my every word. This is probably what people of Pakistan are familiar about. The prominent Middle-Eastern nation fulfills their initial plans to ban encrypted private networks or eVPN. This is a portion of their quest to pin down cyber-attacks and strengthen online security arsenals.

The anonymity will no longer be available within the Internet grounds of Pakistan. However, resorting to this regulation could somewhat attract one of the notorious hacking groups, Anonymous—a known hactivist that hates seeing people barred from freedom of expression within the virtual space. Less than a month ago, another country at this side of Asia, Turkey was hit hard by Anonymous with data breaches. The concurrent intrusion by the same group surfaced following a censorship scheme implemented in the country. Parallel cyber invasion happened in Malaysia in June that caused collapse in 51 government websites of this Southeast Asian state. Anonymous is not only seeking popularity in Asia, middle of this month, they lashed out big time on BART or Bay Area Rapid Transit in Los Angeles.

“In the past, this sort of behavior has caught the attention of Anonymous,” says Kit Dotson, SiliconANGLE’s HackANGLE editor. “The hactivist collective is well-known for an ideological reaction to governments oppressing citizens by taking away their ability to access information—they’ve struck PayPal over Wikileaks, BART over cutting off cell phones, Malaysia and Turkey over censorship. It’s like danging a string in front of a cat.”

This move at a glance may seem like tightening security on a macro level by higher authorities, but giving it another look, it says very little of fighting cyber criminals. The decree strips down its citizens ability to engage in private conversations in essence and promotes “anybody can see what you are doing” system. The intentions of building walls to shoo cyber invaders away is clear, but how they attack the problem may need to be revisited and seep through the minute details. On the other hand, the fear that has widely spread in the last three to four months by hactivists and cyber assassins are so massive that public and private organizations tend to resort at quick but less potent solutions and regulations.


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