Security News
The Reserve Bank of India announced on Thursday it would make its digital currency programmable, and ensure it can be exchanged when citizens are offline. Indian media report that governor Shaktikanta Das outlined scenarios for the programmable digital rupee, including allowing government agencies to ensure payments to citizens are only used for defined benefits.
India's government has granted its Computer Emergency Response Team, CERT-In, immunity from Right To Information requests - the nation's equivalent of the freedom of information queries in the US, UK, or Australia. Reasons for the exemption have not been explained, but The Register has reported on one case in which an RTI request embarrassed CERT-In. That case related to India's sudden decision, in April 2022, to require businesses of all sizes to report infosec incidents to CERT-in within six hours of detection.
Multiple top leaders of India's opposition parties and several journalists have received a notification from Apple, saying that "Apple believes you are being targeted by state-sponsored attackers who are trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID.". For India to uphold fundamental rights, authorities must initiate an immediate independent inquiry, implement a ban on the use of rights-abusing commercial spyware, and make a commitment to reform the country's surveillance laws.
China-based scammers are using a combination of fake loan apps and India's real-time mobile payment system, Unified Payments Interface, to separate victims from their cash, according to a report by threat intel firm CloudSEK. "UPI service providers currently operate without coverage under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act," explained [PDF] CloudSEK researchers, letting the scammers' exploit the platforms with relative ease. Chinese payment gateways ensure the authorities cannot pursue the scammers.
Attacks leveraging the DarkGate commodity malware targeting entities in the U.K., the U.S., and India have been linked to Vietnamese actors associated with the use of the infamous Ducktail...
India's Central Bureau of Investigation raided 76 locations in a nationwide crackdown on cybercrime operations behind tech support scams and cryptocurrency fraud. The police operation, part of Operation Chakra-II, aims to dismantle cyber-enabled financial crime rings and is a collaborative effort involving international law enforcement agencies and tech companies such as Microsoft and Amazon, working alongside the Indian federal enforcement agency.
India is grappling with a three-and-a-half year surge in cyber crime, with analysis suggesting cities like Bengaluru and Gurgaon - centers of India's tech development - are also hubs of evil activity. The report - A Deep Dive into Cybercrime Trends Impacting India from the non-profit Future Crime Research Foundation - identified cyber crime hot spots, as well as the most popular types of infosec assaults, from January 2020 until June 2023.
Two Indian nationals each received 41-month prison sentences for their involvement in $1.2 million worth of robocall scams targeting the elderly, according to the district of New Jersey's attorney's office on Tuesday. Plantiffs Arushobike Mitra and Garbita Mitra both previously pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud before receiving their sentences in Newark federal court.
The Indian President Droupadi Murmu on Friday granted assent to the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill after it was unanimously passed by both houses of the parliament last week, marking a significant step towards securing people's information. "The Bill provides for the processing of digital personal data in a manner that recognizes both the rights of the individuals to protect their personal data and the need to process such personal data for lawful purposes and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto," the Indian government said.
A hacktivist group known as Mysterious Team Bangladesh has been linked to over 750 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and 78 website defacements since June 2022. "The group most...