We have heard about hackers intruding government and private systems. But here is a different case!
As the internet giant Google says, ‘government-backed’ phishing attacks have targeted around 500 Indians during July-September 2019.
Google said this in its recent post, where it informed that they have sent around 12,000 warnings to users across 148 countries. However, it was not disclosed if they were targeted by their own government or others.
According to the post, 90% of users were targeted through ‘credential phishing emails’ aimed at retrieving user ids and passwords for hacking their accounts.
Journalists, human rights activists and political campaigns were among the high-risk targets.
Responding on the issue, Congress leader Digvijay Singh questioned what government has to say on this.
“Google has announced today that 500 Indians were targeted by Govt backed Attackers. What is govt’s clarification,” Singh questioned in a tweet.
Meanwhile, a government official said Google releases such reports every year and whoever finds it risky can register with Google to get the issue addressed.
These are sometimes state support and other times con jobs. It has also been found that people are misled into sharing passwords by sites that look like Google but are not,” the official said in a statement.
The state-supported programs typically include Iran, North Korea and China, the official adds.
According to Google, the latest number seems consistent with the number of warnings sent in the same period of 2017 and 2018.
“Intelligence collection, stealing intellectual property, targeting dissidents and activists, destructive cyber-attacks or spreading coordinated disinformation” could be among the main goals of such government-backed groups.
