The coronavirus pandemic has caused almost all activities, be it learning, work, or leisure to shift online, due to which there has been a significant spike in cyber-crime. Recently, an online session of class-6 students of a girls’ school in Kolkata was intruded by hackers who threatened the students of rape and murder.
According to a report by Times of India, the incident took place on Tuesday when some people entered the online session and started making indecent comments. The hackers then reportedly started abusing and threatening girls with rape and murder. Petrified by the threats, the students alerted their teacher and parents, after which the intruders stopped speaking.
However, the hackers then started writing sexual comments in the chatbox, following which the e-class had to be suspended.
As per the primary investigation, there were two logins in the name of one student. The school authority has said that they are investigating whether any student shared their login id with someone, which may have caused the intrusion. Parents of students from other classes alleged this wasn’t the first such incident during online classes conducted by the school, but it was the most serious one.
This comes as several schools and colleges across the country have been holding online classes as educational institutions are closed due to the ongoing coronavirus lockdown.
Past incidents where hackers hindered online classes
In the month of April, in a similar incident, an unknown man hacked into an online class in Gujurat and allegedly started masturbating. The National Commission for Women (NCW), had taken cognisance of the incident and had written to Gujarat Director General of Police (DGP), asking for probe in an incident.
Prior to this, in an incident, two hackers hindered a geography lesson just a day after Singapore shut schools as it re-introduced a partial lockdown to stop the spread of coronavirus, forcing the country to ban the use of Zoom app for online classes for students following ‘breaches involving obscene images’. The hackers had hijacked a lesson and showed obscene images to students.
India also to turn to Vidyo
A host of privacy concerns related to virtual meetings of top government officials during the coronavirus pandemic has compelled India also to turn to Vidyo, a video conferencing application vetted by the National Informatics Centre (NIC).
