TECHNOLOGY INSPIRATION
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March 11, 2016

Anand Prakash helps who helps report bugs for a host of companies, was recently awarded close to Rs 10 lakh for a Facebook bug he identified. (PIC: https://www.facebook.com/lemonStudioBangalore/?fref=ts Lemon Studio)

Anand Prakash helps who helps report bugs for a host of companies, was recently awarded close to Rs 10 lakh fo... Read More
Anand Prakash, a product security engineer at Flipkart, wrote in a blog post on February 22 that he had found a simple vulnerability on Facebook that could have been used to hack into any user's account to get access to credit or debit card details, personal pictures, and messages without any user interaction. The 22-year-old earned around Rs 1.3 crore just by reporting bugs for Facebook, Twitter and a host of other US-based companies. For his recent contribution, he was awarded close to Rs 10 lakh.



In an email interview with Rohan Laik of the EconomicTimes.com, Anand Prakash talks about his passion, obsession and digital expertise at 22. He also spells out his lofty ambitions that include starting work on his own to secure Indian companies.

Congratulations. Are you a seasoned bounty hunter? How did you start doing this type of error-killing?

Thank you. No, I am not a seasoned bounty hunter. I started doing this back in 2013 after completing my graduation in B.Tech. It all started with free Internet from a network operator for a year. This is an interesting field.

How did you sense such a security breach on Facebook's part? Do you keep checking such websites for security leaks?

I keep testing Facebook (FB) on a regular basis for bugs. Yes, in general, I always keep an eye out for such websites to test security vulnerabilities.

90 bugs for Facebook and 30 for Twitter: those are no small numbers. Do you want to hunt for FB or Twitter on a regular basis? Shed some light on these bugs and the potential threat they carried. Are there any more grey areas of concern?

Yes, I hunt for bugs on Facebook and Twitter on a regular basis. One of my best finds was to know that I was capable of hacking into accounts of 1.6 billion FB users (the recent one). But as a whitehat hacker, one should never do this. I believe in making the Internet a safer place for all.

Why did you want to help websites like Facebook and Twitter? Was it curiosity, professional ability or just the bounty involved?

It had to do more about data security. Facebook has 1.6 billion users and Twitter has 320 million monthly active users. So data security was my key concern -- not the bounty or professional ability.

Considering that you are a product security engineer at Flipkart, what is it about cyber security that gives you the kick? What made you take it up as your vocation?

It all started with a bet. One of my friends challenged me to hack (of course ethically!) his/her own Orkut account and I did this using phishing. I had no technical knowledge at that time. I won the bet at the time and interestingly, it also became the profession that I wanted to pursue.

How does it feel to be in such command over cyber security?

It is still a process of regular learning for me. I plan to absorb everything for more clarity in what I do. Every day newer practices, malice and solutions are being coined. Staying aware and up-to-date is pivotal.


(Pic: Lemon Studio)

Today, with the digital boom, one of the biggest concerns for all the people online is personal security. How compromised are we? Are our actions actually being monitored round the clock?

The majority of Indian startups don't care about security. An example is the Zomato hack where one could see the personal data of 63 million users. The company should never compromise with user data and should have adequate security measures to avoid such breaches.

Indian Startups are vulnerable. I suggest users ask the CTOs/CEOs if they really have a security team of their own. All startups must have a security page on the website. I personally don't think that actions are monitored.

What are the safety measures regular users should ascertain at a personal level? How are we making ourselves more prone to cybercrime on a regular basis?

a) Always make sure you type your credentials over https.
b) People should actually ask the company if they have an in-house security team. Making HTTPs also doesn't make sure your data is safe and secure. There are application level attacks such as SQL injection which can be used to extract users' data.

What is the bigger picture of cyber security in general, the way you look at it? What are the imminent problems and solutions?

VCs should force companies to take care of the customer database. Proactive security is not just essential, it is mandatory. Consultancy companies are not good enough to secure these websites and there are glaring loopholes as a result. Companies should have in-house security teams of their own to avoid circumstances where hackers can have it easy.

'You could have hacked all FB accounts' like your blog says. You chose to be on the green side of things but were you ever tempted to set a foot on the red end?

No never, the sense of making something secure gives me the kick not to misuse my own abilities to jeopardize.

Has fixing bugs/defect/ issues become routine work for you or does it offer a kick every time you scavenge for some new threat and try to tame it?

I don't fix them, I find the bugs. It gives me great pleasure to do it and never does a sense of boredom creep in.

What do you do when you are not spotting bugs?

I work as the full-time security engineer at Flipkart. Personally, for me, it is the best place to work in the country.

Who are your favourite tech writers?

I enjoy reading Aditya Bhushan Dwivedi of YourStory and Matt Navarra of THE NEXT WEB.

What does your bug-detecting arsenal comprise? What system do you use?

I use Mac OS and Burp Suite.

Do you create your own tools or use existing ones? And what is your language of preference?

There are no tools involved as such. I use an intercepting proxy known as Burp Suite (the best friend of all hackers).


Have you ever got in touch with Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey personally?


No, not yet. But I look forward to.


How much are you worth now?


I have earned something around Rs 1.3 crore. I am planning to start something of my own soon - which won't be just another security consultancy firm - and hopefully help Indian companies become more secure.
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March 19, 2015

Microsoft launched its most affordable internet ready phone — Nokia 215 dual sim — in India on Wednesday priced at Rs 2,149, a company statement said here.

The device is the first in its category that will bring consumers the choice of accessing Facebook in nine local languages and also comes preloaded with Facebook and Messenger.

"India is a 'mobile-first' market, and feature phones are the first port of access to internet for a large number of mobile users," said Raghuvesh Sarup, director-marketing, Nokia India Sales, a subsidiary of Microsoft Mobiles Oy.

"Microsoft remains dedicated to driving innovation and introducing phones to first time mobile phone users with great technology packed inside," Sarup added.

Nokia 215 has Nokia Series 30+ operating system and VGA camera.
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March 19, 2015


The government wants IRCTC to emulate Flipkart.

The Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), which operates one of the country's biggest e-commerce portals, plans to hire a consultant to help it assess and increase its valuation, a move seen as the first step to a public listing. "We are trying to exploit the site. Our growth will come from there. We have been asked by the government to grow like Flipkart," chairman and managing director AK Manocha told ET.

"The government wants to monetize railways assets. IRCTC has started speaking to consultancies. For now, it is just evaluating and seeing how much it can fetch if it goes for an initial public offering (IPO). It wants a ballpark figure. It hasn't got into the IPO mode yet," a source, who did not want to be named, said separately. Manocha declined to comment specifically on listing plans, saying it's up to the government to take that call.

The unit of Indian Railways expects to post its highest-ever net profit of Rs 85 crore on revenue of Rs 1,000 crore in the year ending March 31, on the back of growth in e-ticketing and the introduction of several trains last year, director finance MP Mall told ET. Profit is expected to increase 35% to Rs 115 crore in the next financial year, driven by new services and advertising revenue, said Manocha.

IRCTC is targeting Rs 10,000 crore of revenue by 2025. IRCTC stands as a contrast to other e-commerce companies. Flipkart, the country's largest etailer, is valued at close to $11 billion even as it continues to post losses after six years of operations. Other online portals including MakeMyTrip, Yatra and Cleartrip are also in the red.

For IRCTC, the most valuable part of the business is the e-ticketing segment, industry sources told ET. The corporation sells e-tickets worth Rs 20,000 crore annually compared with Flipkart's gross merchandise sales of about Rs 25,000 crore. IRCTC earns a commission on each ticket sold, which makes up for 30% of its revenue and 60% of profit. Other segments — catering and tour packages — which account for 30% of revenue each will get lower valuations.

"If I was to do a fair value of this, it will be somewhere in the $500 million-$ 750 million (Rs 3,150 crore-Rs 4,700 crore) range. Though it is a conjecture, the government will expect at least 3-4 times that number," said an investment banker on condition of anonymity.

Industry sources sounded cautious, given that IRCTC is heavily dependent on one customer — Indian Railways — for the bulk of its business. According to them, the value of this asset in the government's hands would be very different than if it was with a private entrepreneur. Government control may drive down valuations, said Sudhir Sethi, founder and chairman of IDG Ventures, one of the investors in Yatra.com.

"Also, it has only one customer — Indian Railways," he said, adding that investor appetite will depend on whether Indian Railways is willing to sign a substantial long-term contract with IRCTC. The exit route also will be crucial, he said.

Generally, such businesses are valued at 10 times the net revenue of the e-commerce business in the steady state, when the business model is proven, the company is profitable and there is steady growth, according to Tarun Davda, director at venture capital firm Matrix Partners India, which has backed companies such as taxi-hailing app Ola and online accommodation booking marketplace Stayzilla.

The total Indian internet market of $11 billion in 2013 was dominated by travel at $8 billion, followed by e-commerce at about $3 billion and classifieds/online advertising at $800 million, according to a Morgan Stanley report. IRCTC accounts for almost 40% of India's online travel, it said.

IRCTC's strategy is aimed at increasing traffic to the website and cashing in on it by selling online space to advertisers.
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March 19, 2015

India's largest e-commerce company Flipkart.com is seeking to distance itself by more than an arm's length from largest supplier WS Retail, which currently accounts for more than 80% of the platform's total sales.

The move to emulate Alibaba.com's Tmall will allow Flipkart to focus better on the marketplace model. In the past few weeks, the site has told several companies and brands, which sell on the site through WS Retail, to sell directly to consumers through its marketplace in the coming months. 

WS Retail was originally part-owned by Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, who're unrelated. The Bansals sold their stakes in the latter to a group of Indian investors and resigned from its board in 2012.

Shortly after, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) initiated an investigation into whether Flipkart, which has overseas funding, was indirectly involved in retailing products to consumers directly through WS Retail. Indian laws don't allow foreign investment in e-commerce companies that sell directly to customers. 

They, however, allow such companies to set up online marketplaces, the model that Amazon India and later Flipkart adopted. WS Retail currently acts as a sort of clearing house for most of the goods sold on Flipkart, sourcing the bulk of the merchandise from vendors. The latest move will allow Flipkart to concentrate on the marketplace business.

"They are changing their strategy completely — Alibaba is on the same lines," said the head of a fashion brand that currently sells its products through WS Retail. 

"These guys have realized that they have to keep increasing the number of warehouses and team members to follow this model. Why take that headache?" Several large vendors told ET that Flipkart told them to switch their sales to the marketplace from its WS Retail inventory-led model.

Another person with Flipkart's latest move said this was part of the Bengaluru-based e-commerce company's bid to prepare itself for an initial public offering in the coming years. "WSR (WS Retail) is just one of the large sellers on Flipkart. 

We are always encouraging brands/sellers to increase their selection directly and indirectly on our platform — and the brands/sellers are free to make their business decisions based on commercial prudence," a Flipkart spokesperson said in an e-mailed reply, without answering specific questions on reducing the reliance on WS Retail.

Flipkart has sought to position itself as the Alibaba.com of India and the Chinese e-commerce giant's Tmall and Taobao sites function purely as marketplaces. 

As part of its new strategy, Flipkart has told companies that it will no longer hold their inventories in its warehouses and its logistics operators will pick up merchandise from sellers to deliver to end-consumers. The ED is currently investigating whether Flipkart violated India's foreign exchange laws by selling products through WS Retail. Flipkart denies any wrongdoing. Flipkart changed its model to become a marketplace in February 2013. 

WS Retail's revenue more than doubled to Rs 3,135.3 crore in 2013-14 from the previous financial year. Earlier this year, ET had reported that WS Retail is looking to spin off its logistical arm Ekart into a fully-owned subsidiary. A senior executive associated with the cellphone trade said WS Retail still accounts for 70-75% of sales on Flipkart and it wants to reduce this over time. 

WS Retail will continue to be the seller for Flipkart exclusives such as the Motorola and Xiaomi handsets. For other smartphone brands like Sony, Samsung, and Apple, deals will be offered through other sellers. "It's a strategy which Flipkart will adopt for other categories too," the executive said. Smartphones form the largest category of e-commerce in India
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March 17, 2015 ,
All new cars sold in the European Union from March 2018 will have to be equipped with technology to contact emergency services in the case of an accident.
The European Parliament's Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee voted 26-3 on Tuesday in favour of draft EU rules to mandate eCall technology, which would call the EU-wide 112 emergency number automatically if a car crashed.
The vote confirmed a deal approved by the EU's 28 member states earlier in March setting out obligations for car manufacturers. The rules are likely to become law after a vote by the full European Parliament in April.
Separate rules entered into force in June 2014, requiring EU members to ensure they have the infrastructure required to handle eCalls by October 2017.
Some car manufacturers already have comparable systems in place, such as General Motors' OnStar service in the United States and Canada which can summon emergency services after an incident.
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March 17, 2015 ,


"Today is Saint Patrick's Day, the national day of Ireland. Monuments across the globe like the Sacre Coeur in Paris, the Empire State building in New York, and the Colosseum in Rome will glow green in honour of the Emerald Isle. In India, who cares? If it comes on the radar at all, it will surely strike one as being faintly ridiculous. That's how we feel about cricket.
 
Sure, when we beat the West Indies the other day, it appeared, not with great prominence, on the sports section of our papers. Rather, column inches were largely devoted to reporting the multiple Irish wins at the Cheltenham Races, the likelihood of retaining their 6 Nations Rugby Championship title, and Padraig Harrington hoisting another PGA trophy in Florida. When we subsequently lost to another side (Pakistan) with the audacity to wear Green, few in Ireland noticed.

You see, we mostly play Gaelic games: vigorous indigenous sports like Hurling, (similar to hockey but the ball is struck into the air) or Gaelic Football, (an apparent cross between soccer and basketball). We've produced one of the greatest soccer players in history, Georgie Best, some of the greatest rugby players, we have the world's greatest golfer, and so on. Despite having a population the size of South Delhi, we are known, to use a boxing term, to punch above our weight (FYI: four Boxing medals in the last Olympics).

This passion for sports even filters all the way down to the minority interest variety like potholing, croquet or cricket. Apparently, cricket was once popular in Ireland, but that was a long time ago. Our Nobel laureates differed on the game's innate appeal. G.B. Shaw famously remarked that "Cricket is a game played by 22 flannelled fools being watched by 22,000 flannelled fools.", while avid sportsman and French resistance fighter, Samuel Beckett, to quote Wisden, "had two first-class games for Dublin University against Northamptonshire in 1925 and 1926, scoring 35 runs in his four innings..."

The problem for Irish people is the Imperial overtones of cricket; it has never fully rid itself of the tag of the "garrison game". The unrelenting Englishness of it is all too much to take; the wearing of the whites reminds us of the flag of St. George, the chartered accountancy of the score-keeping smacks of colonial bureaucracy, and the necessity to use absurd terms like googlies, yorkers, zooters, or silly mid-offs can only be explained as some kind Orwellian nu-speak to remove the poetry from our Celtic souls.

It wasn't merely the requirement to play an English game (one would be hard pressed to find a game they didn't invent), it was the requirement to behave like the English to play it. Lots of strategising, tactical adjustments, and well, standing about. Sometimes for days on end. Should there not be a degree of urgency in a sport? This is why I have difficulty determining if the quote about "long periods of boredom punctuated with moments of extreme terror" refers to modern warfare or test cricket. This may be the nub of the problem. In Ireland, we admire vigour, passion, full-blooded commitment, getting stuck-in, "giving it a lash", "putting them under pressure". Granted, this charging over the hill giving it the full 'Braveheart" while our opponents wait dead-eyed, coolly loading their cannons may have lead to 800 years of oppression. Still and all, this lack of physical contact in the sport just seems a little wishy-washy.

Obviously, the reality of some gigantic professional cricketer firing a scarlet projectile at your head at 100 miles an hour is very different to the perception of this fey gentility. The difficulty for the Irish public is to draw a distinction between the image of Land-owning Gentry in the 'Big House', the ruling class of Anglo-Irish ascendency, the Raj in the Rain, as it were, and that of cricket's much vaunted tradition epitomized in sepia-toned pictures of curly-tashed toffs, gamboling on the cricket-creases of yesteryear. Essentially, it's Downton Abbey, where you may have noticed, the Irish are the drivers and the English are the drivees.

We are, as a result, always taken aback by Indians' enthusiasm for the sport. You have kicked the British out, right? You no longer have to pretend to like this Victorian nonsense. You have this extraordinarily rich culture in music, art, literature, science, architecture, food and so on and you actually choose to play cricket? Of course, most Irish people will not have been exposed to the joys of Kabaddi.

Having said all that, and despite the lack of resources available domestically and support internationally, Ireland have a cracking cricket team. In successive World Cups we've beaten Pakistan, England and the West Indies. We've got the highest ever successful run chase (against England, 2011), that there have only been five 300+ run chases in the competition and we've got three of them and, of course, the fastest century (Kevin O'Brien against, ahem, England). And all of this from an "Associate Member". It seems, to cite Orwell once more, that within the sport, some nations are more equal than others, though surely that's not cricket?  

The ultimate irony in all of this is that the captain of the English national team is an Irish man, a born and bred Dubliner, by the name of Eoin (pronounced "owe-in", Irish for John) Morgan. Whether, as some joked, Eoin's form had dipped so low he could no longer hold his place on the Irish team and had to settle for playing for our near neighbour, or perhaps, looking at how ignominious his adopted team's departure from the competition has been - he is in fact a fifth columnist, bringing English Cricket down from within, either way.  Happy St. Patrick's Day.

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