The Indian telecom authorities have blacklisted 120 headers containing China connections. According to The Hindu, the restricted headers were run by a group affiliated with a Chinese business.
According to the report, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) undertook an investigation under the Home Ministry and discovered that the headers were housed in China.
Banks, insurance companies, and government agencies employ headers to deliver mass messages (SMS) to consumers and customers. A header, also known as a sender ID, is a unique sequence of letters or numbers that represents the message sender’s brand or corporate name.
According to the government, a West Bengal State Electricity Distribution (WBSEDC) header was hacked and taken over by a Chinese host. The headers were abused to deceive customers who got alerts about unpaid power bills.
According to an official, the IP addresses of all the prohibited headers were tracked back to China.
According to the Hindu article, the SMS included harmful links that, when clicked, resulted in cash losses for the user as the hackers hijacked the phones.
According to an official, the fraud has been going on for three years, and the I4C just recently became aware of it.
In order to prevent the abuse of headers and message templates, the TRAI issued directives to access service providers this year to validate and prohibit all unregistered headers and message templates within 30 days and 60 days, respectively.
According to Parliament, the Department of Telecommunications has taken away more than 15 lakh mobile phone numbers that were given with false information.
