The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has issued an advisory to its jawans warning them against cloning of their social media handles by agencies of hostile countries to extract confidential information related to the paramilitary’s locations, deployment, strength and movement.
Cloning of Facebook accounts and profiles is one such technique adopted by the hackers to retrieve information from unsuspecting jawans, CRPF Deputy Inspector General (Intelligence) Moses Dhinakaran said. He said in many such cases, even money has been demanded from the jawans’ family and friends.
The CRPF has circulated the advisory across various formations underscoring the threat from cloning of Facebook profiles of its personnel.
“It has been observed that anti-social elements and people with malicious intent are using Facebook profile cloning to target vulnerable users. This scam is also being used to target security forces and extract confidential information,” the CRPF said in the recent advisory to the formations in Jammu and Kashmir and Naxalism-hit States.
Following the emergence of the latest cyber threat, the Information Technology wing of the CRPF issued a “Manual on Social Media Cloning” and prepared a video to educate the jawans about how Facebook profile cloning is used to target the security force personnel and preventive means to avoid being trapped in the designs of the inimical forces, the DIG said.
In the last few months, the paramilitary headquarters here has received a number of complaints from jawans highlighting that their friends and family members have received a variety of requests from their cloned Facebook profiles. In one such case, friends of a jawan, deployed in a sensitive location, were asked to send details of his location, claiming “he was untraceable”, officials added.
In September, the CRPF barred its personnel, civilian employees, contractors and visitors from using smartphones in office spaces handling classified information like Operations Room and Conference Halls in order to plug leakage of classified information and personnel falling prey to counterintelligence operations of hostile countries and non-state inimical groups.
The 14-page document for smartphone usage also provided guidelines for using social media in order to secure classified data and information.
The high sensitivity offices encapsulate places designated or accredited for the processing, handling or discussion of classified information in real time like conference hall and Operations rooms and smartphones that store and record data are now prohibited for smartphone usage. If brought to the office, such devices should be kept at specified counters.
“The fundamental principles of information security are confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Every element of an information security program and every security control put in place by an entity should be designed to achieve one or more of these principles. Therefore, it is important to consider the acceptable and not acceptable use of smartphones in an organisation,” read the order issued by the CRPF in September.
Excessive unrestricted usage can lead to breach of security and can compromise national security, it had said.
Likewise, the guidelines for social media usage sought to sensitise the personnel against unintentionally putting classified information in the public domain.
“Government officials using various social platforms are also vulnerable to being counterintelligence (CI) targets of State agencies as well as radical non-state inimical groups. Social media platforms are being used to ferret information from unsuspecting users and recruit gullible officials to later exploit them for subversion,” it added in justification for social media guidelines.
Earlier, following a government directive, the defence forces issued directories to delete over a 100 suspicious Chinese mobile phone applications so as to avoid their personnel getting compromised and inadvertently leaking classified information from hackers of hostile countries.