Cybercrime on the rise in Maldives

Haveeru Online recently reported about a gang led by a 16 year old blackmailing (cyber bullying) senior government officials, MPS and teenage girls online into paying money. According to the report, this has been ongoing for the past five months. The gang from S. Hithadhoo are already under investigation and is believed to be well versed in IT. This comes with no surprise since Internet is widely accessible from anywhere in the country, its just a matter of few clicks to get a hold of the right tools and information required. And with social networking so widespread regardless of age, we often forget that the Internet is public and should think twice before posting personal photos or videos.

This not the first time that we are hearing about cybercrime in Maldives. Recently there was the DDOS attack on Dhiraagu servers and also others in the recent past. Not to mention the many incidents that were not reported. However, this is the first time that a case of cyber bullying has bee reported in the media.

Insecure ID Cards, A Serious Risk

The National Identity Card (ID Card) is one of the most important official documents that we poses as a Maldivian citizen. It is issued by the Department of National Registration (DNR), and is the primary form of photo ID used for almost all the services provided by the government and private organizations. We use it for obtaining the passport, health insurance, marriage, exams, college enrollments, bank verifications, domestic air travel, new SIM card, and numerous other registrations. And of course lets not forget…voting.

Despite all this, we don’t bother much about the importance of this document unless we need it for one of the services that I mentioned before. Most of us don’t bother about keeping it safe, or making sure it is renewed before expiring. But this is not what I intend to discuss in this post.

Since it is a very important document, just like the passport, one would assume that it would have some security features that would prevent from forgeries and fraudulent reproductions. Lets take a closer look…

National ID Card Characteristics:

• By taking a closer look at the National ID Card, we can see that it is simply a plastic card with a magnetic stripe on it.
• The person’s information is printed on both sides.
• The person’s unique National Identification Number (a running sequence, not unique in any other characteristic) is placed on the front side.
• A unique Serial Number (unique to each plastic card) is printed/pre-printed at the back side of the card.
• On the front side, a protective hologram with the National Emblem is used. (The only security feature)
• The magnetic stripe is not used to store any data.

From the above characteristics, we can ascertain that our National ID Card can only be used as a photo ID for visual verification. There aren’t any other integrated mechanisms such as the smart passport for purposes such as biometric verification, data acquisition, etc.

Thus the visual security feature(s) are the only characteristics that maintain the security and integrity of the ID Card, which is vital as proof of authenticity. In the case of the National ID Card, the hologram is the only security feature used.

So why is this hologram so important? Because without the hologram, it is just another plastic card. With the plastic cards as cheap as US$0.15 (MRF 2.00) and ID Card Printers for just US$100-200, anyone can print and reproduce the ID Card. And today several government offices, political parties and private organizations own ID Card printers. The only things that separates the National ID Card and the cards coming out of those other printers is the hologram. So, if for any reason, this hologram layer was to come off, it would invalidate the card, i.e. of course until recently…