It is being reported that ISIS is willing to pay Indian hackers thousands of
dollars to hack into government websites and gain access to sensitive
documents.
The hackers are being asked to create a database of potential Indian
candidates from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. And they are
being offered lucrative deals too. For every 'job' that they do, a hacker would
be paid in excess of $10,000. Experts are saying this has been the most anyone
has been offered in the hacking community.
What the experts say
"There are various underground communities online where hackers interact regularly. Our investigation reveals that for the past six months, lucrative offers for stealing government data came pouring in and hackers were offered a huge sum. Such amount has never been offered to any Indian hacker before. We found that the offers were being made to spread ISIS reach in the country," said Kislay Choudhary, a cyber crime expert working with several security agencies. Kislay also added that stealing a government secured data is a part of ISIS's intelligence gathering exercise.
ISIS, for some time now, has been using its supporters on social media to
propagate its ideologies and indoctrinate the youth across the globe. Experts
believe that unfortunately many of the hackers have already accepted the offer
as over 30,000 have been reportedly in contact with the extremist organisation
in India till now. The recruited hackers are using online apps like Skype,
Silent Circle, Telegram, and WhatsApp with their Syrian handlers.
We might have a problem
Websites and social media pages spewing venom against India have increased substantially in the recent months. Most of the users of these channels are based out of various parts of South India, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Kashmir. The recruited Indian handlers are spreading their hate messages in a localised manner, getting in touch with their audience in Hindi, Gujarati, Urdu, Tamil and Bangla among other languages available online. Bangla too, very recently, has been used to target the youth of Bangladesh and India.
Security agencies recently arrested twelve suspects from around the country
for being in touch with the active members of ISIS in Syria. They were planning
out an attack ahead of Republic Day. A senior officer of a central security
agency helped with an insight, “The work of Indian handlers is to identify
people who tweet or share pro-ISIS and anti-West posts. Such users are
potential ISIS sympathisers. Such people are contacted by ISIS members on
social media and engaged in religious conversations. After assessing their
mindset, pro-ISIS content and videos are shared. If they show interest, they
are enrolled into the terror outfit.”
These ISIS handlers are also focusing the local communal clashes and other
issues minorities face in the country to instigate the youth on several
platforms of social media. On riots, they would reach out to thousands and spew
venom on communal topics. "They spread their message with popular keywords
and hashtags to reach a wider audience," a security official said.
How are we handling it?
Security agencies have reportedly initiated counter-measures and taken down
ISIS content on the internet.
Maharashtra ATS has claimed to have blocked as
many as 94 websites affiliated with the ISIS. While some websites were banned,
the government is also trying to ensure no hate content is put up on sites like
Facebook and Twitter. They are ready to create a 24/7 war room to monitor
everything on social media and the rest of the web .
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