Drinic virus loots in the name of income tax refund

- System of 18 banks in a hurry, beware of logging : Trapped in the lure of refund, please don't cheat, be aware

- An upgraded version of the virus called Drinic has been circulating. The upgraded version of Drinic tries to impersonate the Income Tax Department of India, the Government of India. It is said that this virus has penetrated the system of many banks and thousands of people have been scammed.

With the rise of the Internet, operations including banking have become extremely easy and banks are now at the fingertips. Now, instead of being pushed by banks, people are turning to net banking and mobile banking and taking advantage of the facilities, on the other hand, the henchmen of misusing technology have also increased. New viruses come and hackers try different methods. Due to this, people get confused before they know it.

There are reports of one such virus causing havoc in India. This virus called Drinic is so old. He appeared for the first time in 2016 and even then many people were shocked. Now its upgraded version is circulating. The upgraded version of Drinic tries to impersonate the Income Tax Department of India, the Government of India. So far, this virus has penetrated the system of 18 banks and thousands of people have been affected.

It has not been mentioned that the 6 Drinic virus has penetrated into the system of which banks, but the figure of 18 banks has been given, so most of the top private and government banks must have been affected. Scammers cheat people in the name of income tax refund so most of them are job seekers, businessmen etc. Needless to say, there will be no top bank left as their accounts are only in top banks.

This virus infects people through mobile applications, phishing emails or smishing. Fraud by obtaining password or OTP is called Phishing.

The modus operandi of getting password or OTP by sending fake email is very old. Now is the age of mobile application so fraud is done on a large scale through mobile application and people are also scammed through SMS. Smishing is the practice of harassing people through MMS.

The modus operandi of those who trick people with the Drinic virus is very simple. Those people send messages to their victims in the name of income tax department that such amount of income tax refund is available in your account. Sorry for the error in the tax calculation earlier. Log in now to get this Income Tax Refund. An authentication page is shown for biometric verification before showing the log-in page.

Lalach buri bala hai is said. Due to this, the opinion of a person dies and even if he does nothing else, he has to log in once to know whether this is true or not. Biometric authentication is mandatory before logging in, so a pin has to be entered for that and the person gets trapped. Fraudsters use media projection to record the screen so the keystrokes are recorded and biometric pins are also stolen.

After the taxpayer completes the biometric authentication, the correct website of the Income Tax Department appears in the webview. Once the taxpayer enters his user ID, the screen recording is done and sent to the command and control server of the fraudsters.

Taxpayer keeps PAN and Aadhaar number as User ID. Along with that, the password is also stolen. After visiting the genuine website, the taxpayer is taken to a phishing site and extorted money. Before you know it, the money is withdrawn from the bank account linked to the PAN number. This scam works in such a way that the money goes out within minutes from the account to which the money has been transferred.

Currently, it is the income tax refund season, so most of the people check every time they receive a refund message and fall victim to fraud. Drinic virus targets the class who have money lying in their bank accounts. There are about 83 lakh taxpayers in India. This trick is done by targeting them.

This kind of fraud happened last year also. The gimmick started since the refund season started in September last year. At that time even the cyber experts did not know that the game of cheating people would be going on in this way so the fraudsters made a lot of money. This time also, it is now known that this game has started since September.

The reason why cyber experts did not know about this virus is because when this virus first came into the field in 2016, it was used for fraud through SMS. After that he disappeared for some time. There may have been new versions of it but not much attention. In August 2021 Drinic virus reappeared. At that time, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) also warned about its threat. Report given by CERT-IN with threat to 27 banks of the country.

CERT-IN is the Cyber ​​Security Agency of the Central Government. This agency works to protect the Internet sector of the country from phishing, hacking and online malware virus attacks. Cyber ​​Security experts are in this unit.

These dhurandhars alert the people of the country about all kinds of cyber security. He gave an advance warning and this warning came true. In September alone, there were complaints of thousands of people falling victim to Drinic. As soon as the income tax refund season ended, Drinic disappeared and has now reappeared.

According to cyber experts, vigilance is the only solution if you do not want to be a victim of this kind of fraud. Even if you get any kind of e-mail, sms, ignore it without getting tempted, nothing will happen. If the Income Tax department wants to give you a refund, it will directly deposit it in your account and you will get the information through the bank. It doesn't require any authentication or anything else, so don't be fooled if you understand it's so simple.

Drinic threat more in Android phones

Taxpayers with Android phones are at increased risk of Drinic malware. The reason for this is that an app has been created in the Android App Store that looks like the Income Tax Department. SMS is first sent through mobile phone to wash the drink from virus. APK file is attached with SMS. This file contains an application named iAssist. This application looks like a tax management tool of the Income Tax Department. Install iAssist on an Android phone means that the app also asks permission to receive SMS, read, send SMS, read call logs, read and write external storage.

IAssist then asks for permission to use Accessibility Services to bypass Google Play Protect's protective shield.

Once Google Play Protect stops working, recoding starts and money is stolen from bank accounts by stealing password-pins, credit card or debit card data and used.