A series of “phishing” attacks on laptops being used by army officers in the city and other areas in April has been traced to a logistics firm in the city.
According to an FIR filed under the Official Secrets Act, the email attacks were mounted on April 16 and 17 against several army officers, using a National Informatics Centre ID and routed through an IP address based in Germany.
Sources said that the army officers had been sent a PDF which contained malicious images which when clicked, routed the user to other websites.
When military and police teams dug deeper, they discovered the IP was being remotely used by unknown individuals operating out of a private logistics company located in HRBR Layout, Kalyan Nagar.
In a joint raid by the police and Military Intelligence, Southern Command on Tuesday, officials seized computer equipment. The Central Crime Branch (CCB) said it is analysing the computer equipment.
“No arrests have been made so far. We need to analyse the seized equipment and then take action,” said CCB chief Sandeep Patil.
“Phishing” involves a threat or request for information such as an imminent account closing, a fake message that a balance is overdue or that information is missing from an account. The email will ask the recipient to supply confidential information, such as bank account details, PINs or passwords. These details are then used by the owners of the website to conduct fraud.
“The objective of the attack was to access sensitive information,” army sources said. In a letter to the police inspector, Cyber Crime Police Station, the case was described as pertaining to data theft, stealing of confidential data, hacking and a criminal breach of trust and violation of the Official Secrets Act.