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How Indian government officials are being targeted by Pakistani hacker groups
Updated On: 14 May, 2023 07:25 AM IST | Mumbai | Gautam S Mengle
While the story of the soon-to-retire Indian scientist smitten by woman Pak agent and spilling secrets over WhatsApp is the stuff of movies, he’s not alone. Scores of high-value Indians, government officials and defence staff are being relentlessly targeted by Pakistani hacker groups with sophisticated malware embedded in obscure PDF files and Word
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Imaging/Uday Mohite
In December 2021, the Press Information Bureau of the Government of India issued a routine press release, announcing the appointment of Vice Admiral Biswajit Dasgupta as the Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Eastern Naval Command, Indian Navy. A whole year later, Indian cybersecurity researchers found that the same press release was being emailed to Indian government employees.
When an investigation was launched, it threw up worrying results. The investigators found that the press release, which looked like a PDF document, was embedded with a malware. A malware is an all-encompassing term to describe any software that is maliciously designed to cause disruption to a server, computer, or gain unauthorised access to a system or information. The target? Indian government employees. When unsuspecting staffers clicked to open the file, and later dismissed it as an old announcement resent erroneously, the malware installed itself into their devices, whether computer or phone.
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