Phishing attack targets officials through rogue mail from govt ID

NEW DELHI: A number of senior government officials, including those from the ministries of defence and external affairs, were targeted in a phishing campaign earlier this month, with the attackers using compromised government domain email accounts to launch their hacking attempts, according to government officials and emails seen by HT.

The attacks highlight the constant threat from hackers, and the need for better authentication protocols, experts said. The National Informatics Centre (NIC) issued an alert soon after the attack, although it isn’t clear at this time whether any of the targeted computers were compromised.

The targets were senior officials from at least three internal government mailing lists, according to emails seen by HT. Attached with the mails these officials received were documents that, if clicked, would install a malware on the system of the targets, giving the hackers back-door access, potentially allowing complete spying on the targets.

Altogether, two emails were sent from @gov.in and @nic.in email addresses. “In both cases, GOI officials have been targeted through compromised email IDS of NIC (senders’ email domain: @gov.in and @nic.in) to make email users believe that these emails were genuine,” said an alert issued by at least one of the ministries that was affected. HT has reviewed a copy of the mail warning.

“The phishing emails were sent on February 10 to various officials across the ministries of external affairs and defence and others, with attached documents asking the recipients to click on the files. Soon after, NIC alerted the concerned branches of the potential security breach and notified all officials across ministries of the compromised emails,” said an official, who