Home Ministry think tank alerts against ‘hijack’, sextortion, impersonation scams on WhatsApp

A police think tank working under the Union Home Ministry has issued an advisory and warning against various scams on the popular social media messaging platform WhatsApp, leading to cyber crimes and financial frauds.

The Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD) has identified seven types of such frauds which include fraud in the name of missed calls, video calls, job offers and investment schemes, impersonation, kidnapping and screen share.

The eight-page advisory-cum-alert said that as part of the ‘hijacking’ scam, scammers take unauthorized access to the victim’s WhatsApp (WA) account and request money from their contacts.

“Some people also saw WhatsApp video calls from unknown numbers. These were basically sextortion-based nude video calls that were used to threaten the user.

“Hackers blackmail the user and demand money in return,” BPRD said in a communication obtained by PTI.

BPRD is a think tank on policing topics under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). WhatsApp, on its part, has recently launched several public messaging campaigns to advertise to the public about the security features brought by the platform owned by technology major Meta.

BPRD said that mostly through missed calls made from numbers starting with country codes belonging to Vietnam, Kenya, Ethiopia and Malaysia, hackers use ‘code scripted bots’ to find active users and then send them to various Target for cyber threats.

As part of the impersonation scam, scammers contact the victim by pretending to be the CEO or senior executive of their organization and top management such as CFO (Chief Financial Officer), COO (Chief Operating Officer), CTO (Chief Technology Officer) and Targeting officers. High-ranking police and government officials, it said.

The fraudsters get personal information of those workers by surfing their social media handles and create similar profiles and demand immediate payment on some link by convincing the victim about their busyness in some important meeting or a problem with their old number. Are. To transfer the funds, the BPRD said. It also published photos of some WA accounts in the alert where such attempts were made.

The communication raised specific concerns about the ‘Screen Share’ feature recently released by WhatsApp.

“In the past, several frauds were observed where scammers gained access to the screens of fraudulent victims to conduct illegal activities,” the BPRD said.

It states that scammers pose as officials of banks, financial institutions, government bodies, etc., and once they convince the victim to share their screen, a malicious app or software “secret is installed and the victim’s sensitive information such as bank details, passwords and banking services have been compromised. As part of the do’s and don’ts, the communication asked users to activate ‘two factor authentication or 2FA’ on their WA account, while it also included not to answer and report suspicious or unknown WA calls and asked the user to It was suggested to block contacting numbers.

“The authorities associated with messaging app WhatsApp have already been informed for this data breach act. Since several government bodies and ministry officials are already working on it, official communication is sent to the concerned authorities.

“As a precautionary measure, anonymous communications should be avoided on WhatsApp without verifying their authenticity. Yet, no appropriate solution to such problems has yet been identified,” it said.

(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – PTI)