Journalist and Kandivli resident Komal Panchamatia, 30, was left shocked after she received various calls from her friends claiming that she sent them messages asking for money to be deposited in her Paytm account.
Officers of the Cyber Crime Police Station (CCPS) at Bandra-Kurla Complex were left baffled when they came across a case wherein several persons are believed to have been duped by unknown cyber-frauds through a malware on WhatsApp. This, despite Whatsapp recently having enhanced its security features, including person-to-person encrypted messaging.
Journalist and Kandivli resident Komal Panchamatia, 30, was left shocked after she received various calls from her friends claiming that she sent them messages asking for money to be deposited in her Paytm account.
Explaining the modus-operandi used by the hackers, a cyber-crime officer said, “Panchamatia received a WhatsApp message from her friend, first wishing her a New Year and later requested her to copy a text message and forward it to her through WhatsApp. The said second message contained a six digit code and a link that WhatsApp sends to the user whenever the user wants to activate his number on another device.”
He added, as soon as Panchamatia copied the message and sent it to her friend’s number, her WhatsApp got de-activated, while the hacker who was now armed with the six digit code, used the said code on another device and managed to get access to Panchamatia’s chats, contacts, videos and pictures available on her WhatsApp.
The hacker then sent WhatsApp messages to some people in her contact list and sought monetary help. “The hacker, impersonating Panchamatia, through messages, asked her friends to deposit Rs 2500 in a Paytm account. One friend deposited the money and informed her about it. Shocked with this, Panchamatia realised that her WhatsApp account had been hacked,” the officer said.
"My friend later posted on various social media platforms that my WhatsApp account had been hacked after which the culprit deactivated the number on WhatsApp," said Panchamatia.
Sachin Patil, Deputy Commissioner of Police (CCPS) said, "We have taken the statement of the victim and we will register a complaint for hacking and impersonation under relevant sections of Information Technology Act. So far we have managed to recover the account of the victim and have started tracking the activities of the person through technical assistance since a long chain has been followed to hack multiple accounts,"said Patil. He added that the police are tracking the Paytm account and the number used to hack the accounts.
Digvijay Malhotra, Ethical Hacker, said, "The Trojans and Malware enters the system of the user the moment the person clicks on the link which gives an easy access to the Whatsapp account and the contacts of the victim." He warned that users should not click on unwanted links and share automated codes. "The hackers are targetting more Indian users due to lack of security measures and the low updated versions of android phones," said Malhotra.
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