Home ministry asks DoT to examine spoofed calls by Pakistani official

The MHA noted that authorities should take "punitive action" against the negligent officials of BSNL, MTNL and other such organisations

The Intelligence Bureau of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has requested the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to form a technical committee to examine the spoofed calls made by foreign intelligence officials, especially Pakistanis, by using spoofed or manipulated caller identities.

The Intelligence Bureau has made the request to DoT in an internal communication on July 22.

This comes following the suspicion of the MHA that Pakistan’s intelligence officials have ‘successfully’ used the subscriber database and communication links of state-owned telecom operators Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) for a cyber offence against the said subscribers.

Interestingly, the Pakistani intelligence official has used a fake identity of an Indian defence forces official to acquire information through telephone calls.

In a recent communication, the MHA also noted that authorities should take ‘punitive action’ against the negligent officials of BSNL, MTNL and other such organisations. It also stated that all employees of BSNL and MTNL and other such organisations should be made aware of such developments and they should avoid conveying any information to unknown persons and should not open any link sent by any such persons on their official computers.

According to MHA communication, Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) have used a spoofed number (1123016782) and posed as Major Vijay from Army headquarters, contacted the BSNL official on February 19, 2013 on mobile and complained about his inability to access the subscriber database of BSNL from their website. On his persuasion, the BSNL employee had then sent relevant links to him through e-mail, after he sent a test mail to the Gmail Id of the BSNL official.

The BSNL official had forwarded three web links — www.intranet-bsnl.co.in, https://bsnl.cp.in/opencms/bsnl/BSNL/index.html and https://portal.bsnl.in.

But, the Pakistani official further continued the communication with the BSNL official claiming that the links sent to him could not be opened at his end and then he had forwarded a link from his e-mail Id asking the BSNL employee to open the same in his computer.

The BSNL employee had not only opened the link forwarded by the Pakistani official, but also offered to forward the telephone number of the technical persons at the BSNL handling its call data records project in Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Pune and Kolkata, thinking that he was helping the Indian Army.

The MHA suspects that the Pakistani official have successfully installed some malware in the BSNL system, and had possibly contaminated the computer systems, which may result in compromising the integrity and security of the system. It is further suspected that the malware planted by the Pakistani officially might have used by ISI, as well, in identifying and accessing communication links of sensitive organisations, making them vulnerable to cyber attacks, including remote monitoring operations and disabling of critical networks, noted the MHA communication.

Following the incident on February 19, the matter was communicated to the chairman and managing director of BSNL over telephone and he was asked to take immediate counter measures to deal with any possible damage that may happen to BSNL and other networks that are linked to it, the communication added.

The Prime Minister’s office, the Cabinet secretary, the ministries of Home, Telecom and IT, External Affairs and also the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) were informed about this incident on February 25.