NATGRID to Link Social Media Accounts to Central Database | 13 Sep 2019

Recently, National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) has proposed to link social media accounts to central databases.

  • Linking social media accounts will help to track online terror-related information exchange through individual accounts, online Radicalisation across the country.
  • But at the same time linking the social media accounts to sensitive government data could expose the system to “Trojan Attacks.”

National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID)

  • NATGRID is the integrated intelligence grid connecting databases of core security agencies of the Government of India.
  • NATGRID is intending to set up an Entity Extraction, Visualization, and Analytics (EVA) system.
  • It was first proposed in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in 2008.
  • It is a counter-terrorism measure that collects and collates a host of information from government databases including:
    • Tax and Bank account details,
    • Credit card transactions,
    • Visa and Immigration records,
    • Itineraries of Rail and Air travel.
  • The combined data from NATGRID will be made available to 10 Central Intelligence Agencies.
  • NATGRID faced opposition on charges of possible violations of privacy and leakage of confidential personal information.

Trojan Attacks

  • Trojans are non-replication programs
  • It operates without the permission or knowledge of computer users.
  • Trojans infect outside machines only with the assistance of a computer user, like clicking a file that comes attached with an email from an unknown person, plugging USB without scanning, opening unsafe URLs.

Source: TH