ARMY SOUNDS ALERT AGAINST ALERTS BY ADVERSARIES

The Indian Army has issued advisory to its personnel that “our adversaries” are sending mails, Whatsapp messages on the theme of Coronavirus to hack and compromise email and phones of defence personnel.

“Targeted campaigns on the theme of “CoRoNA Virus” are being undertaken by our adversaries with the primary aim of compromising email/ other accounts and to infect official/ personal IT assets of defence personnel,” said the advisory. It said that in these campaigns various messages in the form of phishing e-mails, SMSes and WhatsApp messages related to “CoRoNA virus” are being circulated to the environment. These messages are embedded with malicious attachments, links, documents and appear to originate from a genuine looking spoofed source.

“Any such “CoRoNA virus” themed message/ e-mail with or without attachments should not be opened and treated with due caution,” said the advisory. It asked the army personnel not to access such message/ e-mail and delete it immediately if received.

Last year, the army had prepared a detailed dossier for its men detailing the various tricks employed by spies of neighbouring countries to trap its men.

It had warned against honey-trap by Pakistan spies who create fake female profiles on the social media like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

It has advised its men to change the privacy settings on Facebook and other apps to “only friends”.

Globally also there have been reports of increase in phishing attacks with emails being sent by hackers offering “confidential” cure developed for Coronavirus or “tax rebates” as people are worried about the impact of virus on their health and on their business.