Sunday 5 August 2012

Sim Card cloning a new mass Cyber attack being experienced by Indian Telecom users

India a country with second largest number of mobile phone subscriber's having more than 965 million mobile phone user's(July 2012).India has a teledensity of more than 80% and an average monthly addition of mobile phone user of around 50 million users currently (July 2012).

These Huge statistics of Indian cellphone users also increases risk of Cyber attacks.Such a recent case of Cyber attacks are being experienced by cellphone user's since a year.User's in India are always being prone to cyber attacks by various organisation which sometime attack for own sake or for the sake of the people of the country(Anonymous India attacks).One such Cyber attack related to cellphone user's is being reported in various parts of the country.

In the advent of such attack first a person receives a missed call from a number starting with +92.calling the number back makes a person susceptible to SIM card cloning. According to various resources cloning a SIM card requires physical access to the SIM card or interception of the communication between caller and it's cellphone operator.

A yogi using a Mobile phone
Over a hundred thousand user's have fallen prey to this scam.Anyone can clone a SIM card by using a hardware tool that can read and copy information from it. But wirelessly or remotely intercepting information contained within the SIM, though theoretically possible, is considered extremely difficult. It may require hacking into the telecom operator's network or using very expensive tools. An article on eHow, a website that explains how users can performs various tasks using several gadgets, says that the SIM can be cloned using a cheap hardware tool that can extract the authentication key from one SIM and copy it to another. But it doesn't mention any method that can make use of missed calls to clone a SIM.In case the subscriber takes the call before it is dropped as a missed call then the caller on the other end poses as a call center executive checking the connectivity.The caller then asks the subscriber to press # 09 or # 90 call back on his number to establish that the connectivity to the subscriber was seamless.

When the user redials the number then a huge sum of money is deducted from the mobile phone if the mobile phone connection is prepaid and if the connection is a postpaid one then a number calls to different numbers creep in the bill of the user.This activity is becoming a lot common these days and is spread across all parts of the country.The intelligence agencies of the country is still skeptical about such a big hacking/cracking attempt being going on.

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