Malicious Mails Sent To Army Officers For Spying Has Links With Corporate Office In Bengaluru

BENGALURU: City police are looking for a suspected spy who sent malware-infected emails to the personal IDs of a few serving Indian Army officers on April 16 and 17.

Sleuths from the Central Crime Branch’s Military Intelligence and Anti-Terrorism Cell (ATC) raided a private firm’s office at HRBR Layout on Tuesday and conducted a search. Military intelligence recently traced the suspicious spy activities to the company’s office using the IP address. On Wednesday, a few firm employees were questioned.

The raiding party seized three laptops and seven desktop computers, according to joint Commissioner of Police (crime) Sandeep Patil, who added that cybercrime police have opened an investigation based on information provided by the army.

The military intelligence unit recently shared information about the phishing attack with the state Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and Bengaluru police.

According to a FIR filed under the Official Secrets Act, the email attacks were launched against several army officers on April 16 and 17, using a National Informatics Centre ID and routed through a German IP address.

According to sources, the army officers were sent a PDF containing malicious images that, when clicked, directed the user to other websites.

The malicious file was designed to be installed after the zipped file was extracted. The installation would prompt a restart of the computer after four hours, as well as the installation of remote-control software to enable data theft and redirection to suspicious servers.

Police said they have filed a case against unknown miscreants under Section 5 (wrongful communication of information) of the Official Secrets Act, 1923, Sections 379 (punishment for theft) and 406 (criminal breach of trust) of the IPC, and various sections of the Information Technology Act, 2000. 

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