New Delhi: On a day its supposed to declare its March quarter (Q4) results, Wipro Ltd on Tuesday confirmed reports about a phishing attack on its IT systems without giving out any details on the extent and effect of the hacking. The Bengaluru-based IT firm, India's fourth largest, said it has hired an independent forensic firm to assist with the investigation into the hacking.
“We detected a potentially abnormal activity in a few employee accounts on our network due to an advanced phishing campaign. Upon learning of the incident, we promptly began an investigation, identified the affected users and took remedial steps to contain and mitigate any potential impact," Wipro told Mint when contacted.
The company added it is collaborating with its partners to "collect and monitor advanced threat intelligence for enhancing security posture".
The breach was first reported by cybersecurity portal, KrebsOnSecurity. "Wipro is investigating reports that its own IT systems have been hacked and are being used to launch attacks against some of the company’s customers," the report said, citing two unidentified sources.
The sources pointed out that Wipro system’s were being used for running a phishing campaign targeting a dozen Wipro customers, who traced malicious and suspicious network reconnaissance activity (a process for testing potential vulnerabilities in a computer network) back to systems that were communicating with Wipro’s network. According to one of the sources, Wipro is building a new private email network as they believed that the attackers had breached their email system.
The report further said the breach is believed to be the handiwork of state sponsored attackers and that Wipro has been dealing with the hacking for over month.
KrebsOnSecurity reached out to Wipro on 9 April for comment. Wipro didn’t comment on any of those questions directly, but issued a statement saying, “The company has robust internal processes and a system of advanced security technology in place to detect phishing attempts and protect itself from such attacks. We constantly monitor our entire infrastructure at heightened level of alertness to deal with any potential cyber threat."
Ahead of its Q4 results annoucement today, Wipro shares were 1.93% lower at ₹282.60 apiece on the BSE on a day the benchmark Sensex hit a new record high.
