Maharashtra Cyber Cell warns of large scale bank-related cyber attacks originating from China

MUMBAI: Maharashtra Cyber Cell has issued an advisory regarding "Chinese cyber attackers planning a large scale phishing attack", revealing that at least 40,300 such cyber-attacks have been attempted in the last 4-5 days which can be traced to Chengdu area of China.

"Maharashtra Cyber Department has collated information that in last 4-5 days, cyber resources on cyberspace of India especially related to information, infrastructure and banking have been under attack from China. The number of attacks has increased," said Yashasvi Yadav, Inspector General (IG), Maharashtra State Cyber Department.

"At least 40,300 such cyber attacks were attempted, most of them can be traced to Chengdu area of China," he said.

Issuing an advisory in the wake of cyberattacks, Maharashtra cyber department has asked people to not open or click on the attachment in an unsolicited e-mail, SMS or messages through social media.

"Exercise extra caution in opening attachments, even if the sender appears to be known. Beware of e-mail addresses, spelling errors in e-mails, websites and unfamiliar e-mail senders. Do not submit personal financial details on unfamiliar or unknown websites/links. Beware of e-mails, links providing special offers like Covid-19 testing, Aid," the advisory said.

The department said that people should check the integrity of URLs before providing login credentials or clicking a link and asked them to consider using Safe Browsing tools, filtering tools (antivirus and content-based filtering) in your antivirus, firewall, and filtering services.