Moot Proposition

Moot Proposition
1. The Republic of Stan, is a developing nation which lies in the southern region of Asia.
The country has a rich history and has seen a huge upsurge in the area of information
technology in recent years. The Stanian Space Research Organisation (SSRO) is the space
agency of the Government of the Republic of Stan headquartered in Periyana, a state in
the southern part of the country, with a vision to "harness space technology for national
development", while pursuing space science research and planetary exploration.
2. In March 2021, the SSRO, in the wake of the recent events of cyber attacks on multiple
websites of national importance, had decided to take extensive measures to secure its
own cyber systems. Thus, after a substantial upgrade of its existing cyber security, it
released a public notification announcing a reward of 1,00,000 in its national currency to
anybody who could find vulnerabilities in their security mechanism. Those interested
were required to fill an online form hosted on a third-party website and subsequently
pay an online fee of 500 in the national currency after which they were to be allotted a
Unique Participant Code (UPC) by way of which they would be identified and be able to
claim the prize, as the case may be. Thousands of people reportedly applied for the
competition but were unable to circumvent the Organization’s security measures put
into place. The contest was subsequently announced closed on August 31st, 2021.
3. Among other participants, Tanvir Ahmad and Ramendra Singhal, first year students at
Stanian Institute of Cyber Security, had also applied for the competition in the month of
June, 2021 to try and find a loophole in SSRO’s security. Although the upgraded system
proved to be too foolproof for them and they could not succeed in their attempt.
However, they had continued to modify their method of attacks and were expectant of
a positive result on their end. On the second Sunday of October 2021, the duo decided
to give their old endeavour another shot and tried a multi-vector attack on the servers
of SSRO. One of their multiple modus operandi in this attack was to introduce a self-
programmed virus through an e-mail which, when accessed, was programmed to make
its way into the servers of SSRO and facilitate the success of the multi-vector attack,
launched from the outside by the two.
4. This method of attack became successful and the duo gained access to SSRO’s servers
on the said date. However, once the breach was successful, the virus began to behave in
a manner not foreseen by the perpetrators of the attack. It affected multiple websites
hosted by the SSRO and began to make innumerable copies of the extremely
confidential data that had been housed inside the servers. Tanvir Ahmad and Ramendra
Singhal, monitoring this breach from their end, noticed this unprecedented behavior of
the virus and were alarmed. Their test runs with the virus had only showed them that
the virus was capable of facilitating multi-vector attacks and taking down the websites
hosted on the infected server.
5. Faced with an unforeseen behavior of their program which they now knew would land
them in the midst of extremely dire circumstances, they sent out an anonymous mail,
addressed to the SSRO, containing the coding of the virus and every other detail they
thought would be helpful in terminating the attack. However, because the servers at
SSRO had been clogged, this message did not get through until it was too late. Multiple
websites hosted on the servers had stopped showing up and the SSRO servers had
become jammed. Following this, emergency response to the attack was triggered and
the servers at SSRO shut down to prevent further damage.
6. Following the reboot of the servers and the restoration of order, the mail which had
been sent anonymously by the two was received and tracked by way of the IP address,
which directed the Authorities to Tanvir Ahmad and Ramendra Singhal, both of whom
were subsequently arrested and charged under Sections 66, 66F of the Information
Technology Act, 2000 and Section 441 of the Stanian Penal Code. The Ld. Sessions Court,
upon perusing the facts and the evidence on record, concluded that there was a clear
lack of intention on the part of the Accused and thus, they were acquitted under all of
the charges labeled against them.
7. The State filed an appeal against the Ld. Sessions Court’s verdict in the High Court of
Periyana. The High Court, in its judgement stated that the mere access by the two of
them was an access without authorization and that the breach of confidentiality of the
files was deemed sufficient to find the two guilty under the charged sections. The
judgement of the Sessions Court was thus reversed and Tanvir Ahmad and Ramendra
Singhal were found guilty under Sections 66, 66F of the Information Technology Act,
2000 and Section 441 of the Stanian Penal Code. They have now filed an appeal before
the Supreme Court of the Republic of Stan.
8. All the relevant laws of the Republic of Stan are pari materia to those of India.

Moot Proposition

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Moot Proposition

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Moot Proposition

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Moot Proposition

You might also like