Risk of cyberattacks is high due to work from home: NTRO


By MYBRANDBOOK


Risk of cyberattacks is high due to work from home: NTRO

In an assessment by the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) it has been shown that India’s critical sectors may fall prey to inimical forces which could use relaxations in geofencing restrictions granted to employees working from home to make cyberattacks. Sectors including government undertakings, strategic and public enterprises, banking and financial services, telecom, power, energy and transport, among others, are susceptible to such attacks.

 

An official from the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC), comments, “In view of the lockdown, several critical sector entities have relaxed their geofencing restrictions to allow their personnel to log-in and work from home. This has increased the attack surface available to threat actors (cyber criminals) from neighbouring countries. Another modus operandi being used by them is to send out legitimate-looking coronarelated advisories impersonating as officials from the government and health organisations, through malicious e-mail attachments.”

 

These impersonators are seeking donations for Covid-19 and trying to steal credentials for online fraud. Recently, the government had to issue a clarification over cyber criminals sending e-mails and WhatsApp messages stating that the government of India was giving Rs 1,000 to those under the socalled Corona Sahayata Yojana scheme. The message requires people to click on a link and provide their bank details and other information. The Centre on Sunday clarified the claim and the link were fraudulent and warned people against clicking on it.

 

The NCIIPC under NTRO has issued guidelines that include application whitelisting, blocking unused ports, turning off unused services and monitoring network traffic to prevent such attacks.

 

The government had advised government employees working in critical sectors to be vigilant, and closely monitor privileged users and administrators of critical accounts.

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