NEW DELHI:The mention of WhatsApp might bring to mind silly jokes, memes and family banter. But something slightly more serious is happening on the online messaging service than one would have guessed—something with potentially sinister security implications.
Personnel of the Military Intelligence and the Intelligence Bureau frequently resorted to messaging each other on WhatsApp to convey routine information. This turned out to be a compromised route—it is suspected that messages were copied and leaked to external agencies.
Fortunately, the information shared was never of the classified intelligence variety. Only more mundane messages, like details regarding coordination, were exchanged.
What happened was that sleuths began noticing things that alerted them to the possibility of others being privy to their plans and movements. Prior closing off of trails and other such ‘conscious’ actions by those who should not have known, this became a pattern hard to miss. The watch was kept from last September.
The situation came to a pass when a third party access to a WhatsApp group was caught. One of the security establishment personnel, while on a rare leave of duty, was found to be making enquiries on postings and daily duties. It was later detected that the person concerned was not operating WhatsApp, but an account using his number was activated from another “unknown’’ handset. Two more such WhatsApp impersonations were subsequently detected.
Once the alarm bells started ringing, SOS was sent to the higher echelons of the security establishment. Finally, the National Security Advisor put a formal full stop to intelligence personnel resorting to any of the usual online media forums for work-related communication. This was the basis of the government circular, issued this February, asking ministries and officials to stop using non-official platform, Google, Yahoo!, Gmail etc, for official communications.
What constricts the intelligence community, though, is the very slow speed offered by the government server. This is what had prompted the recourse to WhatsApp.
Now the security top-notch has directed the IT department to devise a foolproof and fast-messaging platform for the intelligence and wider security community.
During the investigation, it was found that the popularity of WhatsApp extends to people in somewhat more exalted positions—top central bankers, RBI officials, the biggest corporate honchos, and the like.
It was not going to be long before talk of espionage—corporate or otherwise—and leak of classified information started.