MCA-253
Cyber Security and Cyber Laws
Cybercrime and the law around it — classifying offences, vulnerabilities and safeguards, securing applications and detecting intrusions, then the IT Act, forensics and IPR.
- Semester
- Semester 3
- Credits
- 3
- Scheme
- 3 lectures a week
- Contact hours
- 40 across four units
- Category
- Open Elective - II
What the paper is
Cyber Security and Cyber Laws is the paper that pairs the technical material with the legal one, and the legal half is what makes it distinct from Information Security. The Indian IT Act and its amendments, digital signatures in law, punishment for cybercrime, and intellectual property in cyberspace are all examined.
Unit I is a taxonomy: the cybercrimes are enumerated by name — spoofing, spamming, defamation, data diddling, espionage, online fraud, sabotage, email bombing, password sniffing, identity theft — and each is expected to be defined and illustrated.
Units III and IV are the technical and forensic halves. Securing HTTP applications, identity management and authorisation patterns, intrusion detection and prevention, and then the digital forensics lifecycle with its challenges and anti-forensics.
What to concentrate on
- The classification of cybercrimes in Unit I is a list to learn, and it is asked directly. One definition and one example each is exactly what earns the marks.
- For the legal unit, know the specific sections of the IT Act named in the syllabus and what conduct each addresses, plus the legal status of a digital signature. Vague answers score poorly here.
- The digital forensics lifecycle and the chain of custody are the most examined part of Unit IV. Be able to list the phases in order and say why evidence handling matters at each.
Syllabus, unit by unit
Summarised from the approved scheme. Hours are the contact hours the scheme allots, which is a fair guide to where the marks sit.
Unit I · Cyber threats and cybercrimes
10 hours- Overview of cyber security; internet governance, challenges and constraints
- Cyber threats: cyber squatting, cyber warfare, cyber terrorism, cybercrime and cyber offences
- Classification of cybercrimes: email spoofing, spamming, cyber defamation, internet time theft, data diddling, espionage, hacking, online frauds, computer sabotage, email bombing, network intrusion, password sniffing, credit card fraud, identity theft
- Cybercrime on mobile and wireless devices: authentication service security, attacks on mobile phones, implications for organisations, handling measures
- Cyber offences: categories, attacks, social engineering, cyber stalking, botnets, cloud computing
Unit II · Vulnerabilities and safeguards
10 hours- Cyber security vulnerabilities overview; vulnerabilities in software
- Proxy servers and anonymisers, phishing, password cracking, keyloggers and spyware
- Viruses and worms, Trojan horses and backdoors, steganography
- DoS and DDoS attacks, SQL injection, buffer overflow
- Attacks on wireless networks, identity theft
Unit III · Securing applications and detecting intrusion
10 hours- Basic security for HTTP applications, email security, backup issues
- Identity management and web services, authorisation patterns, firewalls
- Intrusion, physical theft, abuse of privileges, access management and models — DAC, OAC, RBAC
- Unauthorised access by outsiders, malware infection, detection and prevention techniques, anti-malware software
- Network- and host-based intrusion detection and prevention systems, security information management, network session analysis, system integrity validation
Unit IV · Cyber law, forensics and IPR
10 hours- Cyber security regulations and the legal landscape around the world
- The Indian IT Act and its amendments; digital signatures and the IT Act; cybercrime and punishment
- Computer forensics: cyber forensics and digital evidence, the digital forensics lifecycle, network forensics
- Relevance of the OSI model to computer forensics, forensics and social networking sites, challenges, forensic auditing, anti-forensics
- Intellectual property in cyberspace: copyright and infringement, jurisdiction issues, multimedia and copyright, WIPO
- Patents, trademarks and trademarks on the internet, trade secrets, trade names, domain name registration, software piracy, legal issues in cyber contracts, authorship and document forgery
How it is examined
- Question 1 is compulsory, covers the whole syllabus, and is made of objective or short-answer questions. It carries 12 marks.
- The rest of the paper is four units matching the four above. Each unit sets two questions and you attempt one, so there are four more answers at 12 marks each.
- Examiners are asked to map every question to a course outcome using Bloom's taxonomy, which is why questions are phrased as “apply”, “analyse” or “evaluate” rather than only “explain”.
The pass mark is 40 out of 100 in every paper.
Learning objectives
- Fundamentals of cyber security and related safeguards
- Cyber threats and vulnerabilities
- Securing web applications
- Cyber laws, cyber forensics and IPR
Assumed beforehand
- Knowledge of computer basics and computer networks
Books it is taught from
- TB1Nina Godbole and Sunita Belapure, “Cyber Security: Understanding Cyber Crimes, Computer Forensics and Legal Perspectives”, Wiley, 1st edition, 2011
- TB2M. Bhushan, R. Rathore Singh and A. Jamshed, “Fundamentals of Cyber Security: Principles, Theory and Practices”, BPB Publication, 2017
Notes for MCA-253
Lecture notes, question papers and assignments filed against MCA-253 are in the library. Everything there has been checked by a moderator before it appears, and an account is free — new ones are approved by hand, which is what keeps the shelf clean.