Tab scam prompts Bengal govt to adopt caution over fund disbursement

Kolkata, Nov 21 The West Bengal government has alerted all district authorities to adopt extreme caution in the disbursement of funds under the Kanyashree project following the recent cyber-scam over the disbursement of funds for the higher secondary students for purchase of tabs.

According to a notification issued on Thursday by the state Women & Child Development and Social Welfare Department, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) has flagged a potential security breach on the Kanyashree portal, which may have compromised specific stakeholder accounts.

The department has also charted out a six-point initiative to prevent similar phishing that happened in the case of the tab scam, where the amounts released from the state government exchequer were credited to the accounts of fraudsters instead of that of the beneficiary students.

The department has directed prompt resetting of passwords for all accounts suspected of compromise. It has also directed the district authorities to ensure that operating systems, browsers, plug-ins and related software are uploaded to their latest versions.

The district authorities have also been advised to remove all unauthorised or legacy software from the affected systems besides enabling firewalls and installing suitable anti-malware, anti-ransomware and anti-exploit software.

The district authorities have also been advised to schedule and execute regular system scans and advise users against saving credentials in any web browser.

The modus operandi of the cyber-forgery in the tab scam was the same where the money transferred from the state government exchequer for the purchase of tabs was transferred to different bank accounts instead of the bank accounts of the genuine beneficiaries.

As per the latest information available the investigating officials have reached the base of such cyber-forgery which was operating from Chopra in North Dinajpur district. Their style of operations had been somewhat similar to that conducted by the Jamtara Gang operating out of the Jharkhand district.

Due to numerous incidents of phishing across the country with Jamtara being the base, the place is often nicknamed as the "phishing capital” of the country.