BENGALURU: E-commerce major Flipkart has lodged a police complaint that its CEO Binny Bansal’s official email account was hacked and two mails were sent from it to the company’s CFO asking for transfer of $80,000.
Cybercrime police describe it as a case of email spoofing, wherein messages are sent from forged addresses.Investigators have found the emails were shot off from Hong Kong and Canada using a server in Russia, sources in the CID said.
The emails, carrying the same message, were sent to Sanjay Baweja, CFO of Flipkart, at 11.33am on March 1. Surprised by the nature of the emails and their timing, Baweja cross-checked with Bansal, only to find out that they were a fraud.
SN Shivagangaiah, an employee with Flipkart, filed a complaint on Bansal’s behalf with the CID’s Cyber crime cell on Wednesday. The hackers seem to have used an advanced virus to hack into the email account. Both emails were sent at the same time using a server in Russia,” CID sources said.
Updated News :
Flipkart on Saturday clarified that Flipkart’s CEO Binny Bansal’s official email account was not hacked and that a case of ’email spoofing’ (which involves the use of a forged email header to make it look legitimate) has been filed with the police.
“We would like to clarify it is not a case of hacking. Flipkart’s corporate email system leverages the highest standards of security including but not limited to two-factor authentication. We have filed a case of email spoofing which involves use of a forged email header to make it look like a legitimate email. This case of email spoofing was immediately detected and a report was filed with the police,” a Flipkart spokesperson