E-BUSINESS AND IT LAW 1.1

Q.1 Define the term “Contract”. Discuss the different stages at which

communication of Offer and Acceptance completes.

A legal, written agreement between two or more parties to perform certain services in exchange for money or other remuneration; also used to describe a type of funding in which specific services are performed for a set fee. Contracts are often awarded on the basis of a Request for Proposal, often referred to as an RFP.

Q.2 Write an explanatory note on the following:
(a) Fabricating false evidence.
(b) Forgery.

(A) Fabricating false evidence

Section 191 of Indian Penal Code provides : "Whoever being legally bound by an oath or by an express provision of law to state the truth, or being bound by law to make a declaration upon any subject, makes any statement which is false, and which he either knows or believes to be false or does not believe to be true, is said to give false evidence".

Explanation:
1. A statement is within the meaning of this section whether it is made verbally or otherwise.
2. A false statement as to the belief of the person attesting is within the meaning of this section, and a person may be guilty of giving false evidence by stating that he believes a thing, which he does not believe, as well as by stating that he knows a thing which he does not know. For example :

1. A, being bound by an oath to state the truth, states that he knows that Z was at a particular place on a particular day, not knowing anything upon the subject. A gives false evidence whether Z was at that place on the day named or not.
2. The petitioner who has made false statement on oath is also liable for the prosecution.
3. The making of a false affidavit is giving false evidence within this section. The making of a false affidavit would be an offence irrespective of the fact that it was not necessary for the deponent who had made the affidavit to make it.

Ingredients of this section:

The accused was bound legally by an oath or by an express provision of law to state the truth or make a declaration upon any subject.
He made such a statement or declaration.
He made it intentionally.
He knew or believed it to be false or did not believe it to be true.
It must be made in a judicial proceeding at any stage.

This section defines what amounts to giving of false evidence. In order to attract this section, it is sufficient if the person making the statement makes it advisedly, knowing it to be false, and with the intention of deceiving the Court, and of letting it be supposed that what he states, is true. The above-mentioned ingredients must be satisfied. If a person is not bound by an express provision of law to state the truth he cannot be charged with making a false statement. The offence is a bailable offence and is triable by a Magistrate of First Class.

Punishment:
Imprisonment for 7 years and fine.

(B) Forgery:

The Black's Law, American College, and Random House dictionaries along with the court citations below define FORGERY as:

The making, drawing, or altering a document with the intent to defraud. A signature made without the person knowing of or consenting to it. The law and the courts say: The Modern Penal Code (MPC sec. 224.1) states that a person is guilty of forgery if:

a) a actor or person alters any writing of any person,

b) makes, completes, executes, authenticates, issues, or transfers any writing so that it purports to be an act of another who did not authorize the act or to have been at the time or place or in a numbered sequence other than was in fact the case, or to be a copy of an original when no such original existed; or

c) utters any writing which he knows to be forged.

"Forgery is a crime when it includes the representation of handwriting of another and the act of uttering as true and genuine any forged writing knowing the same to be forged with intent to prejudice, damage, and defraud any person." State v. May 93 Idaho 343, 461 P. 2d 126, 129.

"Crime of forgery is committed when one makes or passes a false instrument with the intent to defraud, and the element of loss or detriment is immaterial." People v. McAffey, 182 Cal. App.2d 486, 6 Cal. Rptr. 333,337 "The false making of an instrument, which purports on the face of it to be good and valid for purposes for which it was created, with design to defraud any person or persons."

Q.3 Discuss the impact of Information Technology on Copyrights.

All University expects all departments and Web page authors to be aware of how intellectual property laws, regulations, and policies apply to the electronic environment and to respect the property of others.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a provision establishing limitation of liability for infringement of copyright laws by users of computing resources at institutions of higher education. In compliance with the rules of this act, Auburn has designated an agent to receive statutory notices from copyright owners about infringements and to send statutory notices to affected subscribers. Auburn's designated agent is

Q.4 Explain how Encryption works.

It is the purpose of this paper to show that the government should continue to regulate the use of encryption technology. The two main reasons for this are the need to protect the public from terrorists taking advantage of this technology and from the false sense of security that the use of encryption can bring. In order to support these reasons I will first explain the meaning of certain technical terms and show how encryption works. Then I will give a brief description of the pertinent legislature. To follow that I will describe the reasons for government intervention and discredit some myths related to government intervention. Finally I will show why it would be a mistake to discontinue government regulation of encryption technology

Cryptography :

The science of encoding (encrypting) and decoding (decrypting) messages and information in secret code.

Encryption :

The process of scrambling data according to a mathematical formula or algorithm so that the data is unintelligible to all but the intended recipients. In the context of security requirements, encryption enables both privacy (confidentiality of data) and access control (ensuring that the data is accessed only by those who are authorized to do so).

Decryption :

The process of descrambling the encoded data to render a secret message intelligible to the intended recipients.

Key :

A sequence of symbols, represented in binary form as a string of bits, which controls the encryption algorithm (the mathematical transformation of plain text into encoded text). The relationship between encrypted messages and their keys is very much like that between locks and keys. Just as a lock can be opened only with the right key, an encrypted message can be decrypted only with the right key. The widely used U.S. Data Encryption Standard (DES) employs a 56-bit key. Generally, the longer the key, the stronger the algorithm.

Strength :

One of the main points to make about electronic encryption is there are many qualities, or strengths of it. The systems range from one that's never been broken into and never will be, to encryption that looks scrambled and impenetrable to a novice, but can be broken into by an expert in seconds -- without the use of computers. The strength of encryption technology is determined by the number of bits used in the encryption process. The higher the number of bits used to encrypt, the stronger the encryption technology. For example, IDEA (128-bit key) is stronger than DES (56-bit key). This means that the DES technology would be easier to "crack."

HOW ENCRYPTION WORKS

There are two dominant forms of encryption technology that are used all over the world: Symmetric Key Encryption, and Public Key Encryption. Although they work in different ways, they both have the same functional uses. These two types of encryption technology are described below:

1. Symmetric Key Encryption (Heath)

In symmetric key encryption, two people first agree on a pass phrase (or password). The encryption software then converts that pass phrase into a binary number. The software then uses that number (key) to encrypt all outgoing messages. The mathematical code for encrypting the message is called an algorithm. The whole system is referred to a cipher.

At the receiving end, each incoming message is decrypted using the SAME key. The receiver types in the agreed upon pass phrase, and the software converts it to the binary key, and uses that to decrypt the cipher text (the incoming encrypted message). Out of that comes plain text -- the original message in readable form.

Types of Symmetric Key Encryption

Data Encryption Standard (DES): DES is the first standard cipher the business world had. It is twenty years old and still widely used. However, it is aging and getting less secure. A knowledgeable attacker who can afford plenty of expensive computer equipment can now break DES easily. National Security organizations can break this encryption with no difficulty whatsoever. DES uses a 56-bit encryption key.

International Data Encryption Algorithm (IDEA) : IDEA is encryption software that is patented in many countries. However, because royalties are payable to a Swiss Company that owns the patent, the cipher has not been used widely in commercial encryption products. IDEA has become well-known because it is used in PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), a free encryption system that has become widely recognized. IDEA uses a 128-bit key. (PGP Software)

2. Public Key Encryption (Heath)

Symmetric Key systems like DES and IDEA assume that the people communicating have another way to communicate that is also secure. Otherwise, how would they agree on what key to use? For example, if the same key was used for all communication within an organization, anyone who managed to get hold of that key could read all intercepted messages.

In 1976, Whifield Diffie and Martin Hellman at Stanford University proposed a system called "public key encryption." Their idea was developed a year later by Leonard Adleman, Ron Rivest, and Adi Shamir at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This system soon became known as RSA, named after the inventors. A user?s RSA software first generates a pair of keys. Each key is a large integer -- more than 600 digits in some cases. The two keys are related mathematically in a peculiar and useful way: either key can be input into certain mathematical software and used to encrypt a message, and the other key can later be input into the same software to decrypt it. Encrypt with one key, and the other key will decrypt.

The software generates the two keys and chooses one as the public key. The owner can give their public key out freely, even send it over insecure channels such as the Internet. All that can be done with the public key is the encryption of a message. Once a message is encrypted, even the person who encrypted it can not decrypt it.

Practical Uses of the Two Types of Encryption Software (Heath)

In practice, RSA is not used to encrypt messages. RSA is secure and convenient, but heavy on computation. Most messages would take a long time to encrypt and decrypt, even with today?s computers. Instead, RSA is used as a secure way to send a key for a symmetric cipher like DES and IDEA.

Q.5 Explain the limitation and weakness of E-commerce security measures ?

As security of business transaction is the widely cited issue with online tractions, number of security techniques and solutions adhering to well and predefines security standards are available in market. All these techniques and solutions of various vendors are not complementing to each other. Interaction of these techniques in the business process will result in safe business transaction maintaining the integrity and confidentiality of data. The following section introduce some of the most commons solution techniques in e-Commerce security.

There are lots of limitation and weakness of E-commerce security that threads to end user to do transaction on the internet but there are also some solution provided to overcome these limitation. Some of these limitation are listed below :

Threat : Data intercepted, read or modified illicitly

Security : Encryption

Function : Encoder data to prevent tempering

Technology : Symmetric and Asymmetric encryption

Threat : False identity with an intention of fraud

Security : Authentication

Function : Identity verification of both sender and receiver

Technology : Digital signature

Threat : Unauthorized user on one network gains access to another

Security : Firewall

Function : Filters and prevents certain traffic from entering the network of server

Technology : Firewalls; Virtual private nets