Courts in India have the power to direct intermediaries to make content unavailable in India to provide effective remedy to the victim/plaintiff.Section 69A draws its power from Article 19(2) of the Constitution which allows the government to place reasonable restrictions on the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression.Section 69Aallows the government to direct an intermediary to “block for access by the public” any information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in any computer resource if it is necessary or expedient to do so, in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence”.Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000:.There are two routes through which content can be blocked online:.When can the Government Ban Online Content to the Public? VLC website has been banned its app is available for download as the app stores’ servers where the mobile apps are hosted are considered safer than servers where the desktop versions are hosted.Report from cybersecurity firm, Symantec, in April 2022 suggested that Cicada, a hacker group allegedly backed by China, has been using the VLC Media Player to deploy a malicious malware loader.When the website was accessed previously, the message “The website has been blocked as per order of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under Information Technology Act, 2000”, was displayed.However, these applications have been met with similar responses stating that “no information is available” with the Ministry.Civil society organisationshave repeatedly filed Right to Information (RTI) applications with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) regarding the ban on VLC website.While the VLC website has been banned, the VLC app continues to be available for download on Google and Apple stores.Apart from being free and open source, VLC easily integrates with other platforms and streaming services and supports all file formats without requiring additional codecs.VLC gained popularity in India in the late 90s when advancements in information technology led to the penetration of personal computers in Indian homes.What do we need to know about the VLC & Its Ban? VLC states that according to its statistics, its website has been banned since February 2022 in India.The website of VideoLAN Client (VLC) Media Player has been banned in India. VLC refuted the claims of being used by hackers, saying that the Cicada hackers used a modified version of the VLC Media Player and not the official one available.For Prelims: IT Act 2000, IT Rules 2009, Section 69A, Powers of Executive in Banning Content, Cyber Securityįor Mains: Provisions of IT Act 2000, Powers of Government in regulating content, Government initiative for cyber security Why in News? Researchers at Symantec, an arm of American semiconductor manufacturing company Broadcom, discovered that after getting access to the target PC, the attacker used the popular VLC Media Player to install a modified loader on compromised devices. This implies that the hackers exploited a known vulnerability on unpatched devices. The hacking has been traced to threat actor Cicada, also known as menuPass, Stone Panda, Potassium, APT10 and Red Apollo, that has been active for over 15 years.Īpparently, there is evidence that Cicada gained access to some of the penetrated networks via a Microsoft Exchange server. This attack is said to span three continents and has targeted numerous groups involved in political, legal, and religious activities, as well as NGOs. Security experts discovered that Cicada used it to deploy malicious malware loaders as part of a long-running cyber attack campaign. Multiple reports suggest the reason may be that the program was used by China-backed hacking group Cicada for cyber attacks. Neither VLC Media Player nor the government has revealed why the media player was taken down. On a Windows laptop/desktop, even if you have the offline executable setup file, you will be able to install the tool and use it. Curiously its Android app is still available on the Google Play Store.
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