#FactCheck - AI Manipulated image showing Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant dressed in golden outfits.

Introduction

Social media has become integral to our lives and livelihood in today’s digital world. Influencers are now strong people who shape trends, views, and consumer behaviour. Influencers have become targets for bad actors aiming to abuse their fame due to their significant internet presence. Unfortunately, account hacking has grown frequently, with significant ramifications for influencers and their followers. Furthermore, the emergence of social media platforms in recent years has opened the way for influencer culture. Influencers exert power over their followers’ ideas, lifestyle choices, and purchase decisions. Influencers and brands frequently collaborate to exploit their reach, resulting in a mutually beneficial environment. As a result, the value of influencer accounts has risen dramatically, attracting the attention of hackers trying to abuse their potential for financial gain or personal advantage.

Instances of recent attacks

Places of worship

The hackers have targeted renowned temples for fulfilling their malicious activities the recent attack happened on The Khautji Shyam Temple, a famous religious institution with enormous cultural and spiritual value for its adherents. It serves as a place of worship, community events, and numerous religious activities. However, since technology has invaded all sectors of life, the temple’s online presence has developed, giving worshippers access to information, virtual darshans (holy viewings), and interactive forums. Unfortunately, this digital growth has also rendered the shrine vulnerable to cyber threats. The hackers hacked the Facebook page twice in the month, demanded donations and hacked the cheques the devotes gave to the trust. The second event happened by posting objectional images on the page and hurting the sentiments of the devotees. The Committee of the temple has filed an FIR under various charges and is also seeking help from the cyber cell.

Social media Influencers

Influencers enjoy a vast online following worldwide, but their presence is limited to the digital space. Hence every video, photo is of importance to them. An incident took place with leading news anchor and reporter Barkha Dutt, where in her youtube channel was hacked into, and all the posts made from the channel were deleted. The hackers also replaced the channel’s logo with Tesla and were streaming a live video on the channel featuring Elon Musk. A similar incident was reported by influencer Tanmay Bhatt, who also lost all the content e had posted on his channel. The hackers use the following methods to con social media influencers:

• Social engineering
• Phishing
• Brute Force Attacks

Such attacks on influencers can cause harm to their reputation, can also cause financial loss, and even lose the trust of the viewers or the followers who follow them, thus further impacting the collaborations.

Safeguards

Social media influencers need to be very careful about their cyber security as their prominent presence is in the online world. The influencers from different platforms should practice the following safeguards to protect themselves and their content better online

Secure your accounts

Protecting your accounts with passphrases or strong passwords is the first step. The best strategy for doing this is to create a passphrase, a phrase only you know. We advise choosing a passphrase with at least four words and 15 characters.

To further secure your accounts, you must enable multi-factor authentication in the second step.

To access your account, a hacker must guess your password and provide a second authentication factor (such as a face scan or fingerprint) that matches yours.

Be careful about who has access

Many social media influencers collaborate with a team to help generate and post content while building their personal brands.

This entails using team members who can write and produce material that influencers can share themselves, according to some of them. In these situations, the influencer is the only person who still has access to the account.

There are more potential weak spots when more people have access. Additionally, it increases the number of ways a password or account access could fall into the hands of a cybercriminal. Only some staff members will be as cautious about password security as you may be.

Stay up-to-date on the threats

What’s the most significant way to combat threats to computer security? Information.

Cybercriminals constantly adapt their methods. It’s crucial to stay informed about these threats and how they can be utilised against you.

But it’s not just threats. Social media platforms and other service providers are likewise changing their offerings to avoid these challenges.

Educate yourself to protect yourself. You can keep one step ahead of the hazards that cybercriminals offer by continuously educating yourself.

Preach cybersecurity

As influencers, cyber security should be preached, no matter your agenda.

This will also enable users to inculcate best practices for digital hygiene.

This will also boost the reporting numbers and increase population awareness, thus eradicating such bad actors from our cyberspace.

Acknowledge the risks

Keeping a blind eye will always hurt the safety aspects, as ignorance always causes issues.

Risks should be kept in mind while creating the digital routine and netiquette

Always inform your users of risk existing and potential risks

Monitor threats

After the acknowledgement, it is essential to monitor threats.

Active lookout for threats will allow you to understand the modus Operandi and the vulnerabilities to avoid criminals

Threats monitoring is also a basic netizens’ responsibility to ensure that the threats are reported as they emerge.

Interpret the data

All cyber nodal agencies release data and trends of cybercrimes, understand the trends and protect your vulnerabilities.

Data interpretation can lead to an early flagging of threats and issues, thus protecting the cyber ecosystem by and large.

Create risk profiles

All influencers should create risk profiles and backup profiles.

This will also help protect one’s data as it can be stored on different profiles.

Risk profiles and having a private profile are essential to safeguard the basic cyber interests of an influencer.

Conclusion

As we go deeper into the digital age, we see more technologies emerging, but along with them, we see a new generation of cyber threats and challenges. The physical, as well as the cyberspace, is now inter twinned and interdependent. Practising basic cyber security practices, hygiene, netiquette, and monitoring best practices will go a long way in protecting the online interests of the Influencers and will impact their followers to engage in best practices thus safeguarding the cyber ecosystem at large.

Introduction

Who would have predicted that the crime of slavery would haunt our lives through the digital world? In a recent unfolding of events, the cyber wing of Maharashtra has saved 60 Indian nationals from a cyber slavery racket run by armed rebel groups operating in Myanmar and arrested five suspects who acted as recruiting agents, including a foreign national. As per the reports, the racketeers made contact with various individuals, enticing them with offers of high-paying jobs in East Asian countries. The operation unfolds a carefully designed crime network that operates through bordering states, Myanmar, Thailand, and Malaysia, targeting vulnerable individuals through deceptive means and forcing them to commit cyber fraud and financial crimes, operating as an authentic industrial setup. The disturbing set of events makes up only one of many such cyber-slavery incidents that are uncovered and various other rackets that operate in the shadows of cyberspace. Another similar event was reported in March 2025, where the disturbing ordeal of a 52-year-old father from Bihar’s Gopalganj, whose son was lured into working in a scam call centre under the pretence of a data entry job in Thailand.

Counting the Unseen: The Dark Metrics of Cyber Slavery

As per the United Nations report from October 2024, a large number of young individuals are enslaved, acting under the impression they will be employed in high-paying jobs, often on social media platforms, and what follows is an intricate web of cybercriminals operating from illegal scam compounds.  According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), financial losses from scams in Southeast Asia reached between $18 billion (Rs 1.6 lakh crore) and $37 billion (Rs 3.2 lakh crore) in 2023, much of it linked to organised crime in these three countries. Also, acting on a similar premise, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), a division under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), organised an inter-ministerial committee to address a significant rise in cybercrime in Southeast Asian countries, which includes Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos. 

The data from the Bureau of Immigration in the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, which included around 29,466 Indians who travelled on visitor visas to Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Cambodia between January 2022 and May 2024, has gone missing.

From Rescue to Reform: How India is Tackling Cyber Slavery 

The recent events that unfolded have agitated the government to undertake vigilant rescue operations for the missing individuals who became victims of this modern-day trafficking and coordinate with foreign ministries in Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia for extradition and repatriation. It is notable that in the year 2015, India along with seven other countries in South Asia, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, came together to address transnational threats that transcend geographical and cultural borders in cooperation with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC). The collaboration brought together a Compendium of Bilateral and Regional Instruments for South Asia providing for International Cooperation in Criminal Matters. Further, in January 2025, UNODC and the European Union launched a €9 million regional project titled "Preventing and Addressing Trafficking in Human Beings and the Smuggling of Migrants in South Asia." The Government of India, through its various agencies, also lays down various guidelines and advisories on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal. Additionally, law enforcement agencies are actively involved, and cybersecurity NGOs are proactively spreading awareness about identifying red flags associated with threats such as cyber slavery.

Recommendations: A Call to Action

• The various advisories released by the Gov. of India emphasise the need for Indian nationals to verify the credentials of the employer through the Indian Embassy located in that country.
• The authorities and various agencies also stress the need for individuals to refrain from sharing personal information such as location details, contact information or any information pertaining to personal relationships that can be exploited by such criminals.
• The fundamental manner of tackling the crime of cyber slavery is to ensure digital literacy and increase awareness through public campaigns and educational programmes
• The need of the hour is international cooperation and collaboration to undertake a concerted effort to bring back the victims and penalise all those who facilitate such criminal activities. 

References

• https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/more-than-60-indians-forced-into-cyber-slavery-rescued-from-myanmar-5-arrested/article69438991.ece 
• https://www.indiatoday.in/india-today-insight/story/cyber-slavery-the-new-job-con-trapping-indian-youth-abroad-2637157-2024-11-21 
• https://indianexpress.com/article/india/mha-high-powered-committee-cybercrimes-from-se-asia-9345843/ ‍
• https://www.unodc.org/documents/terrorism/Publications/SAARC%20compendium/SA_Compendium_Volume-2.pdf

Executive Summary

The IT giant Apple has alerted customers to the impending threat of "mercenary spyware" assaults in 92 countries, including India. These highly skilled attacks, which are frequently linked to both private and state actors  (such as the NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware), target specific individuals, including politicians, journalists, activists and diplomats. In sharp contrast to consumer-grade malware, these attacks are in a league unto themselves: highly-customized to fit the individual target and involving significant resources to create and use.

As the incidence of such attacks rises, it is important that all persons, businesses, and officials equip themselves with information about how such mercenary spyware programs work, what are the most-used methods, how these attacks can be prevented and what one must do if targeted. Individuals and organizations can begin protecting themselves against these attacks by enabling "Lockdown Mode" to provide an extra layer of security to their devices and by frequently changing passwords and by not visiting the suspicious URLs or attachments. 

Introduction: Understanding Mercenary Spyware

Mercenary spyware is a special kind of spyware that is developed exclusively for law enforcement and government organizations. These kinds of spywares are not available in app stores, and are developed for attacking a particular individual and require a significant investment of resources and advanced technologies. Mercenary spyware hackers infiltrate systems by means of techniques such as phishing (by sending malicious links or attachments), pretexting (by manipulating the individuals to share personal information) or baiting (using tempting offers). They often intend to use Advanced Persistent Threats (APT)  where the hackers remain undetected for a prolonged period of time to steal data by continuous stealthy infiltration of the target’s network. The other method to gain access is through zero-day vulnerabilities, which is the process of gaining access to mobile devices using vulnerabilities existing in software. A well-known example of mercenary spyware includes the infamous Pegasus by the NSO Group.

Actions:  By Apple against Mercenary Spyware

Apple has introduced an advanced, optional protection feature in its newer product versions (including iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura) to combat mercenary spyware attacks. These features have been provided to the users who are at risk of targeted cyber attacks.

Apple released a statement on the matter, sharing, “mercenary spyware attackers apply exceptional resources to target a very small number of specific individuals and their devices. Mercenary spyware attacks cost millions of dollars and often have a short shelf life, making them much harder to detect and prevent.”

When Apple's internal threat intelligence and investigations detect these highly-targeted attacks, they take immediate action to notify the affected users. The notification process involves:

• Displaying a "Threat Notification" at the top of the user's Apple ID page after they sign in.

• Sending an email and iMessage alert to the addresses and phone numbers associated with the user's Apple ID.
• Providing clear instructions on steps the user should take to protect their devices, including enabling "Lockdown Mode" for the strongest available security.
• Apple stresses that these threat notifications are "high-confidence alerts" - meaning they have strong evidence that the user has been deliberately targeted by mercenary spyware. As such, these alerts should be taken extremely seriously by recipients.

Modus Operandi of Mercenary Spyware

1. Installing advanced surveillance equipment remotely and covertly.

2. Using zero-click or one-click attacks to take advantage of device vulnerabilities.

3. Gain access to a variety of data on the device, including location tracking, call logs, text messages, passwords, microphone, camera, and app information.

4. Installation by utilizing many system vulnerabilities on devices running particular iOS and Android versions.

5. Defense by patching vulnerabilities with security updates (e.g., CVE-2023-41991, CVE-2023-41992, CVE-2023-41993).

6. Utilizing defensive DNS services, non-signature-based endpoint technologies, and frequent device reboots as mitigation techniques.

Prevention Measures: Safeguarding Your Devices

1. Turn on security measures: Make use of the security features that the device maker has supplied, such as Apple's Lockdown Mode, which is intended to prevent viruses of all types from infecting Apple products, such as iPhones.

2. Frequent software upgrades: Make sure the newest security and software updates are installed on your devices. This aids in patching holes that mercenary malware could exploit.

3. Steer clear of misleading connections: Exercise caution while opening attachments or accessing links from unidentified sources. Installing mercenary spyware is possible via phishing links or attachments.

4. Limit app permissions: Reassess and restrict app permissions to avoid unwanted access to private information.

5. Use secure networks: To reduce the chance of data interception, connect to secure Wi-Fi networks and stay away from public or unprotected connections.

6. Install security applications: To identify and stop any spyware attacks, think about installing reliable security programs from reliable sources.

7. Be alert: If Apple or other device makers send you a threat notice, consider it carefully and take the advised security precautions.

8. Two-factor authentication: To provide an extra degree of protection against unwanted access, enable two-factor authentication (2FA) on your Apple ID and other significant accounts.

9. Consider additional security measures: For high-risk individuals, consider using additional security measures, such as encrypted communication apps and secure file storage services

Way Forward: Strengthening Digital Defenses, Strengthening Democracy

People, businesses and administrations must prioritize cyber security measures and keep up with emerging dangers as mercenary spyware attacks continue to develop and spread. To effectively address the growing threat of digital espionage, cooperation between government agencies, cybersecurity specialists, and technology businesses is essential.

In the Indian context, the update carries significant policy implications and must inspire a discussion on legal frameworks for government surveillance practices and cyber security protocols in the nation. As the public becomes more informed about such sophisticated cyber threats, we can expect a greater push for oversight mechanisms and regulatory protocols. The misuse of surveillance technology poses a significant threat to individuals and institutions alike. Policy reforms concerning surveillance tech must be tailored to address the specific concerns of the use of such methods by state actors vs. private players. 

There is a pressing need for electoral reforms that help safeguard democratic processes in the current digital age. There has been a paradigm shift in how political activities are conducted in current times: the advent of the digital domain has seen parties and leaders pivot their campaigning efforts to favor the online audience as enthusiastically as they campaign offline. Given that this is an election year, quite possibly the most significant one in modern Indian history, digital outreach and online public engagement are expected to be at an all-time high. And so, it is imperative to protect the electoral process against cyber threats so that public trust in the legitimacy of India’s democratic is rewarded and the digital domain is an asset, and not a threat, to good governance.

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