New Delhi, Dec. 4: For seven months, India has known it lacks a crucial weapon in its fight against terror: the ability to intercept or decipher messages sent using heavily coded telecom and Internet devices.

The government, however, has not acquired the technology to overcome the deficit. Nor, at a time it is being slammed for intelligence failure following the Mumbai terror attack, does it say when it will.

Instead, it has spent months trying to persuade mobile manufacturers and Internet service providers to lower the levels of security they offer — a move that, if implemented, could affect business communications, experts say.

The telecom companies have been asked to lower security codes to 40-bit encryptions, a level up to which Indian intelligence agencies can easily intercept messages. But most satellite phones, Internet telephony services offered by Skype, communication over Internet, and mobile phones providing email-based applications like BlackBerry use over 128-bit encryptions.

Experts say the solution lies not in a lower level of encryption but a higher level of awareness and vigilance.

“If encryption codes are reduced from 128-bit to 40-bit, the online banking and e-commerce sector would be in jeopardy,” said Rajesh Chharia, president, Internet Service Providers Association of India.

Encryption codes are a way of scrambling information sent online in such a way that only the intended recipient has the key to unscramble it to its original form.

Canada’s Research in Motion (RIM), which makes BlackBerry handsets, has warned the government against trying to reduce encryption levels.

“Encryption with key lengths of 128 bits or longer protects business communications and online transactions from hackers. Lower encryption levels would fail to offer protection to sensitive data,” RIM has told the telecom department.

It was in talks with RIM that the Centre learnt in May that it could not intercept or decipher messages on most satellite-based phone services operating out of the country, or messages sent over Internet-based phones using Voice over Internet Protocol technology.

BlackBerry services came under the government’s scanner last year when security agencies said they did not have a system to monitor data and email exchanged between two BlackBerry phones.

Security experts, however, say the technology to intercept emails sent from a BlackBerry is available with many developed countries, which can decode messages with up to 240-bit encryption.

“Data transferred through a BlackBerry can be intercepted and copied using ‘sniffers’ (a kind of software package) put on gateways,” said Rajat Khare, co-founder and director of Appin Security Group.

Besides, experts say a terrorist in India is unlikely to use a BlackBerry, emails from which can be traced to the user unlike with Hotmail and Yahoo addresses accessed from a cyber cafe.

They add that terrorists have adopted a new strategy after some emails were intercepted in the late 1990s.

“The terrorists create a common webmail address and agree on a password. Thereafter they type their messages but instead of sending them, they save them in the ‘drafts’ folder. No internet traffic is generated and other terrorists just log on and check the ‘drafts’ folder,” said Ravi V. Prasad, head of a private communications security agency, C4ISRT.

Experts say satellite phones are ideal for terrorists since they do not need interconnectivity with any country’s domestic network.

The Centre is planning a federal communications monitoring agency to watch over all communication traffic, including satellite, wireline, wireless, Internet, email and voice-over Internet protocol.