Post News Network
Bhubaneswar, June 22: Deepak Kumar Nath, a final year B Tech student from the city, has bagged prestigious awards from software giants Facebook and Microsoft for exposing security loopholes in their products.
Facebook had conferred the Hall of Fame award and a cash prize of $2,000 on Deepak for his contribution towards exposing http parameters manipulation and XSS (Cross Site Scripting), two key vulnerabilities in the social networking website.
A self-taught IT cyber-security specialist, Deepak said the vulnerabilities in the popular website would have given a scheming hacker unrestricted access, endangering the privacy of millions of users.
Facebook immediately fixed the loopholes after being alerted by Deepak.
The computer whiz has also won similar awards from other information technology majors like Microsoft, Oracle and telecom firms like Blackberry and HTC for helping them make their sites foolproof and safe from hacker attacks.
Deepak says IT has been his passion ever since his teenage years. “At the age of 16, when my classmates were playing cricket in their free time, I learnt how to code,” Deepak says.
Cyber-security is of paramount interest for India, Deepak says, echoing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement that cyber-security is an important aspect of India’s security.
As IT users and traffic increase, so do the threats as well. A host of sectors such as banking, commerce, aviation and more rely completely on information technology for their day-to-day affairs, and stand to suffer heavily in case of a cyber attack.
“In the US, even thermal plants are operated online. But not much effort is going into strengthening India’s cyber-security, putting the entire country, its banking, defence, and other sectors in danger as there are hackers within and outside the country that might take advantage,” Deepak says.
Future wars will not be fought in the battlefields but will be fought over the web, with cyber-warfare emerging as the new arena for hackers targeting sensitive databases of other countries. Deepak cited a recent example in which hackers from Pakistan and Israel targeted each other’s government and private websites.
Deepak says one of his goals is to spread the message of cyber-security among government officials and the public.
The young IT wizard has recently given lectures at the National Police Academy, in Hyderabad and has trained police officers in tackling the increasing IT-crimes that happen through fraudulent banking transactions and misuse of credit cards.
