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How Pakistani cyber jihadis honeytrapped IAF officer for classified information

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By Sanjeev Pal
New Delhi, Feb 9 (IANS) It was a group of 300 ISI cyber ‘jihadis’ led by the Rana brothers of Karachi who honeytrapped and blackmailed Group Captain Arun Marwaha to extract Indian defence secrets from the IAF officer who once trained intelligence officers and naval commandos, police said on Friday.

A Delhi Police officer, part of the team investigating the case, told IANS that Indian Air Force (IAF) officer Marwaha — posted at the Air Headquarters in Delhi — was lured by Sajid and Abid Rana and their group members, including some women, who used to chat with Marwaha on social media by posing as sex models.

According to the police officer, Marwaha, 51, shared information and documents with two Pakistani agents who chatted with him on Facebook, pretending to be women. The fake accounts, in the names of ‘Kiran Randhawa’ and ‘Mahima Patel’, were used to lure him.

During sex chats, Marwaha passed on the secret information to the group run by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

The police officer said the Rana brothers had earlier targeted thousands of Indian officers by sending them chat requests through Trojan malware disguised as legitimate software to hack and gain access to the users’ systems.

Users are typically tricked by some form of social engineering into loading and executing the malware on their systems.

A similar application was also used by Pakistani terrorists to access Indian troop’s movement before and after the terror attack on the IAF base in Pathankot in January 2016, the officer said.

“Rana brothers used this application, which is basically a data-stealing software, to take control of the user’s phone,” he said.

The Karachi-based cyber unit observes the Internet habits of Indian defence officials by tracking their social media activities.

“The officers using smartphones of Chinese origin are particularly under their radar. Those visiting porn sites or befriending women using various social media and clicking on links on these sites are being monitored closely,” he said.

The police officer said many other hacking softwares are used by the members of this cyber unit. Some of the commonly used are free proxy, squid, java anon proxy, shadowsoc, tiny proxy, nginx, stunnel, internet junkbuster, proxomitron, safe squid, ghost proxy, steady proxy and others.

These softwares help hackers dodge the investigation agency by re-routing their IP addresses, making the origin of a cybercrime almost untraceable.

The Group Captain was first detained by the IAF on January 31 after his activities were found “suspicious”.

The Air Force later approached the Delhi Police to investigate.

He allegedly used his smartphone to click pictures of classified documents pertaining to the IAF headquarters and then sent them via WhatsApp.

According to a Special Cell officer, the defence officer befriended the ISI agents posing as women models and chatted with them regularly on WhatsApp, exchanging intimate messages.

The ISI agents also blackmailed him after he sent them his nude pictures and videos, the officer said.

“The documents which Marwaha shared mostly dealt with training and combat-related air exercises. We also found he shared documents of the exercise ‘Gagan Shakti’,” the officer added.

The IAF officer had a good track record so far and had trained officers of the Marine Commandos (Marcos) of the Navy and intelligence wing of the IAF.

(Sanjeev Pal can be contacted at [email protected])

–IANS
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Apple is giving a huge discount on its gadgets: Details inside

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If you want to buy an iPhone and were waiting for a nice offer, then we have a piece of good news for you! Amazon Summer Sale May 2022 has begun and they are offering major discounts on various smartphones, laptops, and smart TVs, among others.

The sale is live now on the e-commerce platform with no-cost EMI options and exchange discounts on various products. In addition to this, Amazon has also partnered with several banks including ICICI, Kotak Bank, and RBL so that customers get instant discounts of up to 10% using their cards and EMI transactions.

Customers can easily enjoy this summer sale and get massive discounts on iPhones. They can also compare prices on Flipkart Big Saving Days Sale 2022 before making a purchase.

 

Amazon Summer Sale May 2022: Discount offer on iPhone 13 

Apple’s coveted phone model iPhone 13 in the 128 GB storage model will be available during the Amazon Summer Sale May 2022 for Rs 64,900. The MRP of the phone is Rs 79,900. This means that the customers will be able to enjoy a discount of up to Rs 15,000 on the purchase of the iPhone 13.

If you have an old iPhone in working condition then you will also be eligible to receive another additional discount worth up to Rs 17,000 on the iPhone 13.

Buy at Rs. 64,900 (MRP – Rs. 79,900)

Features of Apple iPhone 13 

The iPhone is powered by an A15 Bionic processor with 6 core CPU. Apart from this, it has 16 core neural engines. With the iPhone 13, up to 512 GB of storage will be available. The iPhone 13 has a 6.1-inch Retina XDR display with 1000 nits brightness.

The iPhone 13 has a 12-megapixel dual rear camera setup. This time a new wide-angle camera has been given, whose aperture is f/1.6. With this, there is support for sensor optical stabilisation. Night mode has been made better than before. The second lens is also 12 megapixels ultra-wide and has an aperture of f/2.4.

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