Ahmedabad: Crime branch officials have found as many as five unsecured Internet connections in Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) and two in Gujarat University. The agency says that it has also found that many institutions in the city have unsecured wireless internet services which can easily be misused by miscreants indulging in terrorist activities like bomb blast threatening.

"At IIM-A, we had found wireless internet connections named Linksys, Devdhar, Pronet, AK Jain, Gandhi and the main intranet used in the campus named WLAN unsecured. Unsecured here means where no strict firewalls are defined and where one can hack into the system with a software available on internet. It's dangerous as in such institutions, it becomes difficult to check every connection," said a crime branch official involved in the operation.

Similarly, Gujarat University also has such unsecured connections. There was a connection titled WA00131 that had more than two nodes available for use. The connection is used by faculty members and in residential campus.

"Terror organisations know well that educational institutes are biggest user groups for internet connection. There are many WiFi campuses in Gujarat alone. However, terrorists now identified as Peerbhoy and Shaikh cleverly used Khalsa College connection in Mumbai. They also took care of deleting history from administrator log, making it difficult for cyber sleuths to get digital footprints. It can happen in Ahmedabad too," said the official.

City crime branch has urged citizens to secure their wireless connections with advanced software and firewalls. "Most routers have security features but by default they are not activated," said cyber crime experts.