The Mumbai police have been receiving a series of phishing emails from the email ID of the cyber cell of the east region. The email IDs of all the other cells have been used to send phishing emails to other police regions. The email had an infected PDF attached to it. The PDF file was not named as per the Mumbai police standards. The PDF file had a virus, which is why the police are advising the public to be careful about opening attachments.
This is the second recent hacking attack on a government entity in Maharashtra recently, with the first being the October 2020 malware-caused grid failure.
The PDF file attached to a phishing scam mail has a PDF icon, which gives it a genuine look. The mail states the “Intelligence Inputs” have given information about the terrorists behind the attack in Mumbai.
Sources said it is suspected that hackers may have used software to access the email ID and password of the East Region Cyber Cell and decrypt data.
When cyber experts tried to access the complete list of target emails during a preliminary investigation, they were unable to access it.
According to the data, the police email ID hack was a result of a malware infestation on the system. The mass failure on October 12, 2020, was caused by a lack of regulation on the grid of the power station of the area.
At the time of the incident, nobody had even remotely suspected that the grid failure was caused by a malware attack. That Chinese hackers were responsible came to light earlier this year when the state government submitted a report on the matter.
the cybercrime police are investigating if the attack was made from Pakistan, Delhi or a remote village in Uttar Pradesh. According to sources at the department, it appears that this hacking incident is an act of cyber-terrorism.
We have initiated an inquiry into the hacking and have requested police officers not to open the PDF file as it may lead to a hacking of their emails. Today, out technical team visited the Shivaji Nagar police station, where the east region cyber cell office is located, and studied mails.
superintendent of police (Maharashtra cyber cell) Sanjay
An internal report submitted to the Maharashtra government on the October 12, 2020 power grid failure, which hit Mumbai and its surroundings
The massive blackout in India on July 30, 2012 had led to one of the biggest data breaches in history. On the day of the geographical outage, The government had also said that 8GB of data was unaccounted for. But the reason for the outage was never found out. To this day, it remains one of the biggest unsolved cases in the world.
