The Magic of Phishing – Senior Karnataka cop falls prey to phishing call, loses Rs 2lacs

          Nobody is safe from cyber criminals these days, not even the Police Personnel.

          It was turn of Karnataka Internal Security Division (ISD) chief Ashit Mohan Prasad to fall prey  to cyber criminals. The cyber criminals this time made  away with Rs 2 lakh within minutes of collecting his debit card details from him.

          On 16/10/2018, Shri Ashit Mohan Prasad, a 1985-batch IPS officer of Karnataka cadre, filed a complaint with the cybercrime police station of the Criminal Investigation Department stating that he lost INR2 lacs.

 As per CID sources, Prasad received a phone call around 3pm on Monday. The caller, claiming to be a bank executive, told him that his two debit cards would expire soon and asked him to reactivate them.

Prasad shared the debit card details of his one account with the caller.

In a few minutes, he got another call from another ‘executive’ and he shared debit card details of another bank. Within minutes, he received a message on his cellphone that Rs 1 lakh each was debited from his both accounts.

Prasad confirmed that he had lost money. “I was in a hurry to leave and the executive who called me shared my debit card numbers and said they were about to expire. Due to negligence at that moment, I shared details and within minutes, I received messages saying money has been debited,” he told Time of India reporter.

Sources said the complaint was filed online and probe suggested that the fraudsters who cheated him had called at least 27 people the same day and were able to con some of them.

In the first week of October 3018, Infosys Foundation announced setting up a cybercrime lab for Karnataka Police.

Infosys Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Infosys, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Karnataka Police to set up a Centre for Cybercrime Investigation Training & Research (CCITR) in Bengaluru and maintain it for five years.

Infosys Foundation has committed ₹22 crore to support building the centre that will house the CCITR through a public-private-partnership model.

The objectives of CCITR are to train police, prosecution, judiciary and other departments in technology and create standard operating procedures (SOPs) in cybercrime investigations.

The SOPs will enable Karnataka Police to quickly solve cyber crimes.

Sudha Murthy, Chairperson, Infosys Foundation, said: “The CCITR is a project for the present and the future, aiming to build state-of-the-art facilities to tackle cyber crimes in Karnataka. The MoU is for upgradation of the existing cyber lab for a period of five years.

The foundation will fund the set-up and provide facility management and operational costs, including maintenance of equipment and their fittings.”

“The foundation will handle the capital investment for hardware, software and working capital requirements for conducting training programmes, conferences and digital forensic analysis. Technological infrastructure by providing specialised tools and incurring relevant licensing costs upgradation of the existing cyber lab for a period of five years,” she said.

Karnataka Police also announced the a tie-up with Data Security Council of India (DSCI) to build a “Safe cyberspace”.

Criminals will always be there, and the society has to find ways to check-mate their activities.

Along with Infosys Foundation, Data Security Council of India (DSCI), a premier industry body on data protection in India, also committed to making the cyberspace safe, secure and trusted by establishing best practices in cyber security and privacy.

Rama Vedashree, CEO, DSCI, said: “DSCI has proposed to start the Centre in collaboration with the Criminal Investigation Department of Karnataka Police.”

“DSCI continues its commitment to build the capacity of law enforcement in handling cybercrimes through our Cyber Forensics initiative. The Cybercrime investigation manuals developed by DSCI are acting as reference material for the police, prosecution and judiciary in handling cybercrimes,” she added.

Elaborating on CCITR, Praveen Sood, Director-General of Police, CID, Karnataka, said: “The centre will also be used to perform research in digital forensics and cybercrime investigation that will improve the prosecution of cybercrime cases investigated by the Karnataka Police.