DailyPost 2976
CYBER FRAUD CHALLENGE -’ ROOTED DEVICES’
If you still feel that cyber is not the main arena of crime and police moving aimlessly in the physical world can stem the rot, then we are the farthest from reality. Accepting that Cyber Police would be the main police in the days to come, would be accepting the reality and the preparation / training and capacity building needed to start right now. Otherwise we are moving in that cyber morass and we will never know how to get out of it. However much we imagine given the public domain data globally, it would be difficult to fathom out the reality and pace of exponential growth. We are at a cyber crossroads.
Just try to digest the headline or the datapoint, depending on which way you look at it. The gravity anyway remains the same. Rs 111 crore, 623 bank accounts, 25 arrests, and 370 actively receiving money makes it perhaps the biggest cyber crime bust in the country so far. On 11th of November, the Surat Police arrested four suspects, to their surprise that these names figured in at least 200 FIRs across 15 states and union territories. The initial arrests were made of digital arrest gangs, indulging in money laundering including overseas.
The arrests were a result of a meticulous effort of three months in which Ahmedabad police followed the money trail in a specific case. In the process of that investigation they detected that “ lakhs of money parted with by cyber-fraud victims were first landing in ‘mule account,’ functional on ‘rooted devices,’ operated from outside India. A ‘rooted device’ gives the user administrative or super access to the operating system by manufacturers and carriers limitations. In this case, set up on Taiwanese technology, got connected to a router that bypassed in-built security systems, thus forwarding all OTPs and calls to another device operated remotely. This may have been operated from Taiwan or Dubai.
Mule accounts were opened in the most dubious ways. The victims, mostly daily wagers, were ready to share their documents for a few thousand rupees. Cards were sent abroad for money to be withdrawn in cash. It took the crypto and hawala route as well. The cyber crime cell discovered several dens with ‘rooted devices’ operating mule accounts. Besides laptops and computer recovery, 198 bank passbooks, 139 debit cards, 336 sim cards, 16 bank kits and 36 mobiles were also recovered. The money was getting transferred to active recipients from the victims of digital arrests, betting scams, investment scams and recovery frauds. Where do we go from here?
DO WE EVEN HAVE DIGITAL DOSSIERS AND / OR A COMPREHENSIVE DATABASE OF CYBERCRIME SYNDICATES OPERATING IN INDIA?
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.