BSides Ahmedabad 2024 Keynote: Shri Konda Vishweshwar Reddy

the year was 1704 and a decade earlier there was a mini ice age and in Europe Millions died and millions those days was a big number it was followed by the Spanish war of succession the Young Prince or the prince died or the king died without any child and uh and Austrian bagged Contender was there and that was uh Arch Duke of Charles from Austria and uh Philip of Spain both were fighting for the throne and it was World War zero this was more than World War before World War I so it dragged in Austria Spain Portugal England Netherlands Italy so it was World War o and the British those days had partial control over over Mediterranean and there was

only one opening to Mediterranean which is only 20 mi and it was a southern tip of Spain Gibralter the fort of Gibralter and uh if you control the entrance to Mediterranean you had there was no Su Canal you control the trade to the whole LAN and uh the whole of the Mediterranean and uh British wanted to seize this opportunity when these guys are fighting let us get hold of Gibralter and British didn't have a big Force there so what they did is the Spanish they were present there with the Dutch they were allowed to stay in Gibralter but they wanted to use that opportunity to grab Gibralter and uh what they did was to fight against a

massive Army which was andamp they both the French and the Spanish were on the one side and the tiny British and the Dutch were holding this Gibralter they sent in people disguised as Carpenters they sent in people disguised as Traders they infiltrated them and gave the opposition fake maps of retreat fake locations of armed dumps they probably did every trick you guys do now and they actually won the battle but that was one thing but these things deceit and stealth we common in the past in history the Battle of forre The Americans were fighting the British and they had a on the rge they put a whole lot of cannons and they all made of wood so the

British thought that's where the artill is and they s the artillery the real American artillery was somewhere else and uh the US troops had ghost Army in the second world war and they had this inflatable tanks and a whole Army and the Germans were fooled then uh in the Rome and the Gul the comics the aster Comics the Romans and the GS so they had a fake Fort wall behind that there was another Fort wall so they thought they'll easily climb over this and they went the GS were caught between this two Fort walls and they were massacred and there were so many things the British hid in the water tanks and uh this thing

and of course you know the Trojan Horse which actually you have the Spy way from but also from our own epics ramayana and Mahabharata you heard about the golden deer and uh you heard about the wax flamable Palace pandas were lwed into it by the kavas and and finally the kowas managed to escape they wanted to trap them ENT trap them and then burn the wax C wax Palace and kill the kowas but they managed to escape and the moral from the story in Mahabharata is it teaches us three things vigilance against deceit importance of trust and resourcefulness in adversity and that is what applies today in your field in cyber security but what am I doing here a politician

yes I was a engineer but I truly feel like a relic from the past but not yet a fossil and uh that is technologically I'm A Relic from the past and uh I completed my engineering in uh 2018 and uh I went we were in my five years it was fire engineering it was mostly analog electronics and that's when we started using Digital Electronics so we had and Gates and and Gates and or Gates and we have this little timer chips and we had this DEC counters we put it all together and we we make some device and we thought those were the intelligent device all the old guys did analoges and we were the digital and

then came in the micro processors and there was this big war between Pepsi and Cocola those days where Motorola and Intel Motorola and Intel were competing fiercely in the 4bit microprocessor range but then came the 8080 the 8bit microprocessor and it Leap Frog and it left Intel far behind and I was very very good at Assembly Language programming of 8080 I had fun it was those days but after that so many things have changed Assembly Language but today I'm truly excited to be here at the bides cyber security conference in Amad I'm truly excited because ever since I boarded the flight in Hyderabad to now I was sitting with some of your colleagues here I learned a lot so I thank the

bides team nikl sriwastav jinen Patel Saab Kumar and all the organizers here thank you all for calling me calling A Relic here and learning a lot but also the dignitaries on the Das Vias shastri G eminent guests speakers the sponsors and officials from the government Police Department Executives and most importantly the Cyber Warriors and the vidas that are here you are protecting the economies the ations and also those little children who are prone to child trafficking so I really applaud you for your profession and your work and your dedication and it is definitely great to be here but I actually had a speech written for me most politicians have it but when I boarded the flight and sitting next to

some of this and uh I realized I'm just out of place and uh there's a huge gap and uh whatever I'm going to speak is totally be going to be totally irrelevant so I had I spent last night writing all these on my bits of papers and uh so I did learn a lot of jaggon words I never heard before sandbox air gap spear fishing wishing honey pots excesses Threat Vector and uh bounty Hunters bug bounty hunters I believe there are a lot of bounty hunters here and uh then I realized that Romans trapping those Galls in that was I realized that last night it's what you guys called honey pot and that's what it

is and uh so the Everything Has Changed technology has changed but deceit and vigilance has not changed the mechanism of Deceit and deception and the mechanis of vigilance has not changed and we can definitely learn a lot from history and uh and if you notice I used one word which probably is Jon for you I called some of you guys vidas which also I coined just now after you know talking to some of you last evening and this morning so in Mahabharata in Mahabharata [Music] the pandas escaped that wax Palace which they going to be which going to be burnt and they all going to be killed but it is not just because of their

resourcefulness their vigilance and knowing who to trust and who not to trust they it was this vidura who was this person who was keeping a watch on pandas and uh watching the threat and informing them of the threat and I think that is what your job is no matter how powerful and resourceful pandas had they always needed a vidura to watch over and inform them of the threats so no matter how big the corporations are how much how big the it departments are they always need a withdra from outside to keep a watch on your threats and that's why I called you all I address you as vdas here today and in this Warfare where does our

government stand where does our government stand and believe me I was in the parliament in 2014 I'm in the parliament now and as much as the private it sector and the industry is developing the government is not far behind and it is ahead of many many many governments today otherwise by today many of our corporates would have collapsed our economies could have collapsed and the the national threat would have been even greater and even in United States I think in the state of Delaware somebody with Ransom we sabotaged the water pipeline system so in the morning when they open the tap there was no water and they actually paid ransomware through cryptocurrency I don't know the name of the state so we

are still protected so we are right there and uh our government is definitely keeping a watch on us and whether it's the I forc or the ncsc or the drdo or the ctin or the S train which has trained over 50 or 60,000 uh uh people mostly from the government on cyber security but also in the recent G uh G20 our government announced we are going to develop we are going to develop 30,000 cyber Commandos and uh so our government is right there prepared prepared for today forcing the threats for tomorrow Prime Minister Modi G has mentioned cyber security has become a weapon of war and it's not just limited to digital activity it has become a matter of

National Security and and who are all involved which are the governments and the home Ministry is involved the ministry of electronics and it is involved the ministry of defense and drdo is involved and the pmo's office is directly involved in all this so we have four Ministries from different aspects they're working and there's also a coordination between all of them and uh I was actually at the home Ministry Office last week and uh going through some of these magazines and getting some of the data there's a magazine called Vigilant India it's published by the Home Ministry I don't know how many how many of you this is the magazine it's published by the Home Ministry so I happen to get

my hands on this and our government is right there it is also being the vidura for the nation and foreing the threats so our Union Minister our Union minister of Home Amit Shah G said the union government established the Indian cyber crime coordination Center I foresee to Ure Ure a comprehensive response against cyber crime and to train uh governments and individuals on uh uh cyber security and we have the world's largest cyber training system in the uh anyway and we already trained more than 50,000 people and certified them but uh more importantly before coming to the conference I myself am actually a lay person in this and I read about about in the newspaper yesterday

there were three crimes all three crime has a cyber element in Hyderabad yesterday's Times of India almost every day except for the classical murder with a knife almost all crimes have a cyber cyber angle to it and again one of my friends were calling it's called mixing and uh different types of cyber crime the combination of cyber crime artificial intelligence then cryptocurrency and all these are making it even more deadly but uh I'm trying to figure out are we headed for the Dooms Day is a future bright or Bleak so the only figures I was trying to which I still did not get what were the crimes what were the financial fraud as a percentage of GDP before internet and

now after internet and after cyber crimes what is the percentage so I was reading the World Bank figures quoted in that magazine is $5 trillion $5 trillion between 19 2019 or 2023 that translates to about 1.2 trillion and the world the whole world GDP is are between 90 and 100 billion so it's less than 2% but then our friends here yesterday evening they said no no no no you are wrong it is 8 5 trillion and it's going to be 8 trillion next year frankly no matter who says it and it's going to be 10 trillion next next year I don't believe it because that translates to 10% of the GDP I also don't believe because I'm an optimist

the reason is if it's 2% of the GDP is all the cyber crime fault it's okay manageable if it is 8 10% it is not manageable but more importantly I want I don't have the figures probably someone should enlighten me and all of us if the percentage of cyber Financial cyber fraud as a percentage of GDP is it increasing or reducing so I feel it is reducing cyber and non-cyber financial frauds because if it is increasing if it is 8 10% and they're saying it will it's 8 8 trillion and it's going to be 10 trillion so it's going to be at 22% growth and the GDP growth is only 3% if the Cyber financial fraud overtakes the

GDP growth then I can see the Doom in the future and the future is not bright it's bleak but I'm a p Optimist and I don't think I think our GDP will far and other growth and our vidas and the cyber security professional will control that here and I was also discussing various different by the way I do have an IT background although I talk about ramay and tell you stories I do have it background and we are talking about air gaps but I was also talking about the drawbridge so if you have a large repository of data and you also have to have a public face and access your data through the internet better than better than

uh better than air gaps is a drawbridge concept where you you have your main database and when the transactions have to be uploaded the drawbridge is put down and the data goes in one way data goes in one way of course the Trojans can go in ransomware can go in but when the uh bridg is down you can watch out filter all this and then put back the bridge and this can happen two times a day or once every second depends on how speed your how fast your systems are so we talking about that and you can have two draw Bridges so first you let the data in here and then check and then you

let the data go in and these are all Technologies from our history but uh I want you to leave this with a challenge to all of you but before I give the challenge to all of you I also met uh some gentleman from Singularity University who came to Hyderabad 2 weeks ago his name is Peter dtis so he talks about abundance the challenges before us one challenge is how to control you know how to protect our economies our Nations and the children from cyber threat but there are many other things that's happening and uh according to him he runs a university called Singularity University he has a concept of abundance we are living in a

world of abundance and it's going to be more and more we have more energy than we need we have more food and India produces more rice than we can eat much more rice than we can eat and telengana produces five times more rights than we can eat but it's not just India or telengana in every aspect we are going there Prime Minister Modi said we I'm going to give a billion uh uh uh 10 million Indians free electricity because solar technology is improving and we can afford to give free electricity we already give free rice in advanced country like Norway you don't have to work you get a free minimum income work is optional and your

lifestyle if you're working and high life style if I'm not working is approximately the same we eat the same Burger we wear the same jeans so these are some of the threats that are coming but also the other thing is other threats we see is once this happens I again heard one more Jon it's called post economy World which means money is not going to be make any sense if everything is abundant if I have to work for it money makes sense if I don't have to work for it money doesn't make sense this is the imate thing of what is called as social justice which you know in India and the cast and division based

reservations and appeasement and things like that so the world is going to change faster one side we are worried about cyber security other side the gains and the changes to the society in the post economy world and also remember India which was a fastest growing Nation no I'm not talking about economy yes economy we are the fastest growing nation in the world but our population is stabilized so we are not going to consume more we are not and it's going to actually in southern states it's falling in Northeast it's falling rapidly Indian population so we are going to consume less and the world is going to be different from many many uh perspectives and uh we have to be

prepared for it and artificial intelligence and uh I was told Quantum Computing Patel G has mentioned Quantum Computing is already here I thought it's something in the future it's already here this is a combination which brings changes in our life and we have to be prepared and one of the ways we can be prepared is we have to love everything human we have to love everything human and that is the only solution I don't like a painting made by something I don't like a music sung by somebody some computer so I don't like some food cooked by a computer I like that human touch and that is definitely the way for us to go forward but here's the last

challenge for all of you and I want you to take this challenge can you hack an Indian a electronic voting machine I challenge you none of you can hack a Indian electronic voting machine I mean you can hack but what's the purpose of hacking the end goal is to alter the election results right what's the point of hacking and destroying it there's no point so can you hack an Indian evm without getting caught without leaving a trail of evidence and proof and it cannot be done and it's a open challenge to you yes we've seen those pages blowing up in Pockets but let's I'll just leave the beginning how can you hack a see it's very

difficult to hack something that is cutting edge technology something that uses AI Nvidia fast Nvidia chips and quantum computers is going to be difficult for you hack but it's also going to be difficult for you to hack something that's very primitive which has and Gates or Gates and Logics yes you can hack a evm but it's going to be a hardware hack there's no operating system in there not only there's no operating system there's no input there how how can you reach there only this voting button this scn at this then you have onoff switch then you have reset switch then you have voting commencement voting uh end switch only some four switches that's the only input there's

not nothing else and a charger input there's no way the only way is you have to have Hardway check the hardw hack you have to take out the chip and replace the chip but to hack a Indian AVM machine you need to hack the man the machine and the procedure if you can do all that then you can alter the election results but the evidence is out in the open yes let's say the chip where it is manufactured you hack it and change the chip we always this party wins but remember in a voting machine the process and the men involved they are these buttons this button the voting machine doesn't have a camera or nothing it doesn't have input

it only can say this button is pressed 600 times this button is pressed 500 times this button is pressed whatever 400 times so if it is hacked in the factory it does not know who this button belongs to because it is only on the commencement where the factories hand over to the election commission the EVMS commissioned and after that on the last day of voting the last day of withdrawal and the verification of candidate which happens 10 days before and 5 days before in the commissioning or 6 days before in the commissioning then only the buttons are assigned to the candidates so if I hack them in the factory if I hack them in the factory I may hacking them to

make my opponent win and I'll lose all the votes because I don't know which button is assigned to me so it's only the beginning it's only the beginning so I'll leave you with this Challenge and go through the man machine and process and that is one of the lessons in cyber security it's not just technology alone it is the man machine and process so I'm available on Twitter send it to me but please don't hack my Twitter account and uh uh we'll take this forward I'll challenge if you have any ideas on how to uh hack evm machine please let me know thank you and thank you all