Pune: The hacking of the WhatsApp account held by NCP (SCP) working president and Baramati MP Supriya Sule is one among many such cases being dealt by the police in the city since the beginning of this year. Last year, Pune Cyber police had alone dealt with 22 complaints of WhatsApp account hacking. The handling of such complaints has now been decentralised to the police station levels.
While there are no concrete figures of the complaints this year so far, the police said they had been handling at least one complaint every day at the police station level, indicating the rise in such crimes. City-based cybercrime investigation expert Sandip Gadiya said, “WhatsApp is one of the easiest and most comfortable applications to use for different purposes, including personal, business and finance. We receive one complaint of WhatsApp being hacked each day.
” He said, “Fraudsters hack the WhatsApp accounts by sending phishing links under the guise of govt agencies. People generally download the application by clicking on the links and end up sharing the OTP generated by the application. OTP is prompted when one has to hand over control of the application to another device.
” Once OTP is shared, the fraudsters gain control of the WhatsApp application. “If the account of a business person is hacked, the fraudster demands money from the accounts department of his/her firm by sending messages with different bank account details,” he said. “WhatsApp can also be hacked using the sim swapping technique.
In this case, fraudsters gain control of the WhatsApp application by prompting a sim change command,” he said. Police generally take the phone and format it after securing its data to restore the WhatsApp account. Cyber crime expert advocate Gaurav Jachak told TOI, “There are high chances of WhatsApp getting hacked when a person uses it on desktop and the sim number is compromised.
Sim is compromised when the victim unknowingly shares details of their phone with the fraudsters.” Senior inspector Swapnali Shinde of Cyber police told TOI, “Online fraudsters randomly send messages containing dubious links of remote access software. Sometimes, the remote access software comes with an online form, and the victim, who receives the message containing the form, ends up filling it.
Once the form is submitted, the account is compromised.” “Sometimes, the victim receive dubious links from their contact list, friends or relatives or whose WhatsApp account has already been hacked,” Shinde said. The fraudsters use the hacked WhatsApp accounts to demand money from friends and family members of their victims, citing financial or medical emergencies, Shinde said.
“The fraudsters also demand money (extortion) to give back control of the account to the victim and its data. In a few cases, it has been found that the fraudsters share details of the victims with the online banking systems and take loans in their names,” she said. Additional commissioner of police (Crime) Shailesh Balkawade said, “Each application has many private features, which can be made stronger to avert hacking of applications like WhatsApp.
People can have a two-factor authentication system functioning to avert such hacking of the application.” “People should not reply to messages received from unknown senders. Before downloading any application, they should verify the application,” he said.
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