India says Navy officers and their families being targeted by cybercriminals

The advisory comes at a time when cyber attacks have been rampant on ministries and departments

Indian government has warned that its Naval officers and their families are being targeted by cyber criminal groups in a bid to extract sensitive information from them.

This comes at a time when Indian defence personnel, including bodies such as Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) etc are increasingly being earmarked by threat actors because of the frequency with which they deal with sensitive information.

The advisory by Indian Navy from last month said, "In addition to
government agencies, personal devices of Naval personnel and their families are also being targeted to extract information.

"Various cyber security incidents remain either unreported or under-reported, which leads to paltry analysis of cyber security incidents," it said while urging victims to report such incidents.

The Navy warned its personnel of mobile-based malwares, those that are specifically designed to target mobile devices, such as smartphones, smartwatches and tablets.

The member of the Indian Armed Forces apprised its employees that cyber criminals can use methods such as making fake calls, enticing users to install fake apps and so on to deploy such malwares.

As part of its recommendations for preventing such cyber attacks, the Navy urged its personnel to keep system operating systems and apps updated, use trusted chargers or PC cables and so on. "A malicious charger or PC can load malware to the smartphone and take control of them," the advisory read.

Interestingly, the Navy also urged its personnel to disable advertisement tracking on Android and Apples iOS. "Disabling it will make it substantially harder for advertisers and data brokers to track and profile a user and will limit the amount of personal information that reaches the advertisers," the advisory read.

Earlier Moneycontrol had reported how another Indian defence body warned its employees of DogeRAT malware, which when infects a device can steal information from a smartphone, capture photos on the device and so on.

According to the advisory , the malware was being circulated by a cybercriminal group over Telegram under the guise of legitimate applications such as ChatGPT, the Opera Mini browser, premium versions of YouTube, and other popular apps and websites.