Facebook Account, False Identity, Romantic Messages: How Indian Defense Officials Were Targeted by Pakistani Spies
Facebook Account, False Identity, Romantic Messages: How Indian Defense Officials Were Targeted by Pakistani Spies
To target and trap Indian defense personnel, a Pakistani spy assumed the identity of Sejal, an Indian woman. She belonged to a network that exchanged information and advice on tricking Indian defense personnel. It was evident from one of the chats that the group was attempting to execute a cyberattack.
New Delhi: Many spies operating out of Pakistan have been impersonating young Indian females in order to target higher officials in Indian defense organizations. The shocking information was obtained from court documents related to Nishant Agrawal, a former scientist at the Nagpur branch of Brahmos Aerospace Private Limited (BAPL) who was found guilty of disclosing classified military information.
According to a classified source report from TOI, these spies described themselves as Aditi Aaron, Aditi Agrawal, Divya Chandan Roy, Neha Sharma, Pooja Ranjan, Anamika Sharma, and Arohi Alok, all of whom had Indian-sounding names.
In October 2018, Nishant Agrawal, the person who had followed a court trial, was taken into custody by the Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorist Squad (UP-ATS). A Nagpur court condemned him to life in June of this current year.
It was made clear during the trial how Aggarwal ended up in this position through a conversation with a Facebook user called “Sejal.” In his testimony during Agrawal’s criminal prosecution, Pankaj Awasthi, the UP-ATS investigating officer, stated that the woman used this account to communicate with her Indian targets as well as Pakistani operators.
According to the discussions, she belonged to a group that disseminated information and advice on tricking Indian defense personnel. According to Awasthi, one of the conversations revealed that the organization was attempting to execute a cyberattack.
Sejal presented herself to Agrawal as a Manchester student to a former IAF employee and as a recruiter from a UK-based organization. Agrawal worked as a senior systems engineer at Brahmos Aerospace, as he had stated on his profile. According to Awasthi, he was also friends on Facebook with Neha Sharma and Pooja Ranjan, both of whom had active profiles from Pakistan.
They even had a conversation on LinkedIn during which she expressed interest in hiring him. In 2017, Agarwal loaded three apps on his personal laptop: Qwhisper, Chat to Hire, and X-trust, after Sejal requested him to click on links she emailed.
The applications were malware that took information, including classified material, from Agrawal’s laptop. She attempted to get in touch with other defense officials in addition to Agarwal. Among them was a former IAF officer stationed in Lucknow, who had erotic chats with the concerned Pakistani account “Sejal.”
This officer had also received the Qwhisper spyware, which steals data, from Sejal. However, his own laptop turned up with no hidden documents or proof of criminal activity. He thus dropped out of the accused list and made a culprit.
The policeman acknowledged speaking with Sejal. Under cross-examination from the defense lawyer Chaitanya Barve, Awasthi stated he had not forwarded the laptop belonging to an IAF man for forensic analysis. The device had been formatted by the police, according to the investigations.
According to investigations, Sejal had given his mobile number to another former IAF employee in Amritsar with whom she was in contact. According to Awasthi, the Amritsar IAF officer was also found not to have committed any crimes and was not taken into custody.
What Experts Say About This?
Similar to these incidents, a bulk of common people have been daily by many hackers, either from Pakistan, India, or any other part of the world to befool them using these silly tricks of False Identities, Romantic Messages, Erotic Videos, and many more using many social media accounts like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Telegram (MASSIVELY!) and many more.
You may refer to the following video explaining things in detail about what experts say about this:
About The Author:
Yogesh Naager is a content marketer who specializes in the cybersecurity and B2B space. Besides writing for the News4Hackers blogs, he also writes for brands including Craw Security, Bytecode Security, and NASSCOM.
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