The number of army officers who have fallen victim to honey traps has surged recently. On July 27, an army jawan was detained in Jaisalmer for allegedly spying for a nearby country after falling victim to a honey trap. An Indian Army soldier named Shantimoy Rana was detained in Rajasthan on June 26 on suspicion of spying for Pakistan. The accused shared footage of army drills and confidential information about his regiment with two women from across the border after they tricked him with a honey trap. Similar to this, on May 18, Rajasthan Police detained an army jawan who was assigned to Jodhpur and was originally from Uttarakhand. The jawan was tricked into giving his ISI handler crucial information by means of a honey trap. Devendra Sharma, a jawan in the Indian Air Force, was court-martialed in April when it was discovered that, had been tricked into giving his Pakistani handler vital information.
This is happening despite, India's security establishment alerting its intelligence services, last year, to a complex scheme devised by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to eavesdrop on Indian military and paramilitary personnel in order to obtain classified intelligence on strategically important installations and assets. It has warned members of the security establishment—in particular, the Indian Army and the Border Security Force (BSF)—not to accept friend requests from strangers on social media and to be cautious of them.
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, has long been accused of sponsoring terrorism and conducting covert operations against India. One of its most notorious units is Unit 412; a shadowy organization is tasked with carrying out honeytrap operations, sabotage, and targeted killings.
What is Unit 412?
Unit 412 is a clandestine unit within the ISI, believed to be headquartered in Karachi, Pakistan. Its exact structure and operations are shrouded in secrecy, but it is known to be responsible for a range of covert activities. The primary aim of Unit 412 is to destabilize India and undermine its national security. By carrying out honeytrap operations, sabotage, and targeted killings, Unit 412 seeks to sow discord and mistrust among Indians, disrupt the country's economy, and weaken its military capabilities. Unit 412 operates with a high degree of secrecy, using a network of informants, cutouts, and safe houses to carry out its operations. Its operatives are trained in a variety of skills, including espionage, seduction, and assassination.This unit is luring our security establishment officials into this honey trap, how they are trained and how they function.
The Pakistan Army's cross-border espionage division reportedly sent out 10 modules, each including more than 100 girls, throughout the nation in order to honey-trap Indian military personnel and use them as spies. The ISI is training the girls, who include college girls and sex workers, to be honey-traps for espionage in India. These honey-trap modules were introduced by ISI's Unit 412 in Hyderabad, Pakistan's Sindh Province. Beautiful girls from Islamabad, Karachi, and Lahore have been enlisted by the ISI, which is instructing them in all the tricks of the trade, including how to use a honey trap for espionage in India. A Pakistani Army brigadier and captain-rank officer is in charge of ISI's Unit 412.
The women are given Indian Hindu identities by the ISI once they have been trained as intelligence agents. These identities include names like Seema, Kalpana, Neetu, Geetu, Khushee, Muskan, and Harleen, among others. They are also taught how to dress and do makeup in an Indian manner. Important details about Indian army officers, including their positions and locations, are given to these girls.
Following their training, these honey-trap operators are given apartments to carry out their operations inside Pakistan's army camp. Their apartments are furnished with picture frames of Hindu gods and goddesses and a tiny temple to give the impression that the setting is familiar. This way, when on a video call, their topics of interest won't have any reason to question their motives or history.
Using fictitious identification, these ISI agents bombard army leaders with friend requests on social media. They first fool the concerned official into accepting their friend request by engaging in ridiculous romantic conversations. When everything goes according to plan, the girls ask them out, and they then start talking about sex. These girls trap their targets by making naked video calls, thinking that their actions on social media or in exchange for an exchange is a private matter, until they are thoroughly engrossed and won over. These girls convince them to provide ISI with the sensitive information it requires by gaining their trust and becoming their favourite.
When the girls respond to the officers with recorded video conversations and sex chats and threaten to expose them, the officers get the shock of their lives. Their victims gather and provide them with the information they are blackmailed into submitting. The ISI raises the status and benefits of its agents who are successful in befriending an officer and obtaining the needed knowledge on India's military outposts and strategic resources.
There is another unit at play in this game. As you are all aware, in 2016 Indian security authorities put a cyber-unit in Karachi under investigation for luring defence personnel into social media honey traps intended to steal important security-related information and communications. With the support of Pakistani spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the 300-person outfit led by hackers Sajid and Abid Rana is suspected of using Trojan malware masquerading as a chat app to target thousands of Indian officers.
After the terrorist attack on the Indian Air Force (IAF) base in Pathankot in January 2016, Pakistani handlers used the app to track the movement of Indian troops. It is thought that the spy centre used software that was "installed" in their victims' phones to successfully acquire a significant amount of data and telephone conversations. The two brothers first came to the attention of Indian authorities in 2015 when they were running Smeshapp, which included spyware that could be installed on desktop computers in addition to smartphones. This spyware allowed a third party to access personal data, including text messages, phone logs, and even stored photos on the compromised device. Google Play blocked the app and took it down from their store.
Indian specialists, however, claim that the Rana brothers are still encouraging their victims to download the spyware by portraying it as a conversation interface on social media. Members of their unit use fictitious photos to construct Facebook profiles. A cyber team tasked with tracking Indian army personnel on social media establishes connections with multiple potential victims throughout the initial stages of their operation. After they become friends, they send lewd photos to the targeted cop and use voice over internet protocol (VoIP) to create an online call in an attempt to gain their trust.
A report claims that the spy team also developed a news page about the Indian armed forces that offered reliable information and statistics. However, as soon as a person signed into the website, Trojan virus would infect their smartphone or PC. According to a security organisation, the Rana brothers' cyber teams have been developing mobile apps, fabricating social media personas, following Indian officers online, and maintaining database logs all thanks to money from ISI. According to reports, the app had access to army men’s smartphones. By using honey traps to entice Facebook accounts, the spyware was released. All branches of the military services, including the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and Border Security Force (BSF), were targeted by the aforementioned software.
Field-level officers appeared to be the targets 'selected' for luring, while it also appears that retired Indian military personnel were involved in the operation. According to reports, a man from Karachi housed the data that the software gathered on a server located in Germany. Pakistani hackers have been observed at a number of international conferences in the past few years, posing as app developers looking for foreign servers to run their applications on. But according to intelligence officials, the goal was to gather more information and widen the net.
Pakistan has always employed covert action and terrorism as tools of State strategy against India. It has given anti-Indian extremists a haven and recruited, trained, financed, armed, and infiltrated terrorist groups in India. Pakistan has not yet removed the terrorism infrastructure in the region it controls, despite the international outcry against terrorism, the public posture it has assumed, and a number of actions the governments of India have taken to foster confidence. Pak-ISI continues to support and exploit this infrastructure in order to enlist, equip, and acclimatise terrorists for infiltration into India.
In order to combat the activities of Pak-ISI, our government has devised a well-coordinated and multifaceted strategy that includes bolstering border management to prevent illegal cross-border activities, stepping up intelligence operations, closely coordinating various Central and State Government agencies, neutralising militant and anti-national elements' plans through coordinated action, and equipping police and security forces with cutting-edge, highly sophisticated weapons and communication systems, among other measures. The perceptions of threat and actions of Pak-ISI within the nation have been brought to the attention of State Governments by the Central Government. But it is time now to act tough on these matters and take an instant action on such nefarious designs of our neighbour.
By Nilabh Krishna
(The content of this article reflects the views of writers and contributors, not necessarily those of the publisher and editor. All disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of competent courts and forums in Delhi/New Delhi only)
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