Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, January 07 2010:
Following reports of targeted attacks on Government networks and organisations through malicious e-mails, the State Government has been alerted against this internet threat.
It is reported that antivirus and anti-spyware programmes popularly used in India may not be able to detect these malicious e-mails.
An official source said that Information and Technology Commissioner PK Singh issued an office memorandum on January 6 which alerted all Government departments against this e-mail threat.
These e-mails targeting specific Government departments and networks are maliciously crafted and sent from addresses of trusted agencies and colleagues in the PDF file attachments.
The accounts of these e-mails may be spoofed accounts.
These PDF file attachments are embedded with malicious code specially designed for exploiting vulnerability of Adobe flash player and Acrobat Reader.
The office memorandum issued by the Information Technology Commissioner also contained certain guidelines to protect their systems from these targeted attacks.
It has been advised that internet advisors should not open e-mails and attachments from untrusted sources and unexpectedly received from trusted sources and to set security settings in the browser to prompt and also to use anti-virus and spyware at different levels.