Tuesday, September 8, 2009

‘BOSS’ TRACED !

Cyber cops break phishing gang

By Pradeep Gupta

The Cyber Cell of Mumbai Police has managed to trace the mastermind of bank account phishing nicknamed ‘Boss’, who is alleged to be involved in several phishing cases across the country.
A reference to ‘Boss’ turned up during interrogation by Cyber Cell officials of four persons who had been arrested earlier. The officials traced his mobile phone signals to Delhi and a special team is already headed there.
Suresh Kolati had registered a complaint on August 5 with the ICICI Bank’s main office at Hyderabad claiming that someone had withdrawn Rs.25,000 and Rs.21,000 from his account by hacking his password.
The bank informed their vigilance team who set out to crack the case. Meanwhile, on August 8, the ICICI staffers at Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) received a call from an informer tipping them off that an accused involved in bank account hacking cases would be coming to Carter Road.
Accordingly, the BKC Cyber Cell, which is located just opposite the ICICI building, was informed and a trap was laid at the site from 3.30 pm onwards. At 8.30 pm Ganesh Agrawal and Irfan Sheikh landed there and were arrested by the Cyber Cell officials.
Their interrogation led to Nigerians -- Fidilist Khichan and Kevin Obina Khichan who were later arrested from Chembur station.
According to Sunil Ghosalkar, the Police Inspector of Cyber Cell, “Ganesh Agrawal had been for some years in Malaysia where he met some Nigerians. After coming back to India he joined their gang. Ganesh would provide the details of the account holders and forward the same to other Nigerians in India. These Nigerians would send the information to their bosses in Nigeria who hacked into the account from there and provide the passwords to the counterparts in India, who would then withdraw money from their account.”
The officials have recovered a diary from the accused which has details of accounts belonging to several people. “We are planning to write to the concerned banks to approach us if they have such cases. We hope that after their interrogation, we will solve other such bank account hacking and fraud cases,” added Goshalkar.
However, the police is waiting for the arrest of the mastermind ‘Boss’ whose arrest may help them crack many cases of phishing.

What is Phishing?

Phishing is an e-mail fraud method in which the perpetrator sends out email in an attempt to gather personal and financial information from recipients. Typically, the messages appear to come from trustworthy websites. Web sites that are frequently spoofed by phishers include PayPal, eBay, MSN, Yahoo, BestBuy, etc. A phishing expedition, like the fishing expedition it's named for, is a speculative venture: the phisher puts the lure hoping to fool at least a few of the prey that encounter the bait. Phishers use a number of different social engineering and e-mail spoofing ploys to try to trick their victims.

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