Chinese hackers target Indians

 Cyberpeace Foundation found that domain links created for the scams were registered in China to an entity called Fang Xiao Qing

Millions of Indians are believed to have been targeted during recent festive season sales by online shopping scams orchestrated by suspected Chinese hackers based in Guangdong and Henan provinces, according to CyberPeace Foundation, a cybersecurity think tank.

The hackers created spurious links and asked users to click on them to participate in online contests with prizes. These links were spread through WhatsApp messages and are believed to have been sent to millions of Indians.

Some of these scam contests borrowed elements from actual sales campaigns used by Amazon India and Flipkart to trick users.

For instance, “Big Billion Days Spin the Lucky Wheel" and “Amazon Big Billion Day Sale" surfaced within days of Flipkart announcing its Big Billion Day Sale.

During its investigation, CyberPeace Foundation found that the domain links created for the scams were registered in Guangdong and Henan province to an organization called Fang Xiao Qing.

These domains were registered using Alibaba’s cloud computing platform. The links used for the scams are still active.

To send the scam links and make their accounts look legitimate, hackers created fake accounts using fake images and comments.

Read More - Source : livemint.com

✍️ Abhijit Ahaskar