Mumbai:
The latest modus operandi used by a company listed with the National Stock Exchange (NSE), to get its stocks purchased by a large number of people and also get an increase in its prices, was through the cyber space.
Several thousand users of internet across the country have been receiving emails where the senders have mentioned that the stock prices of a leading infotech training and education company may rise by 500% in a week.
According to findings by the Symantec Global Intelligence Network (GIN) experts from the Pune-based lab, the email has been pumped into cyber space as part of a propaganda by the IT company to gets its stock prices increased during the Diwali season, which is seen as a very high trading season in the stock market.
Shantanu Ghosh, vice-president, India Product operations, Symantec said, "This is an attempt to influence the stock price of a publicly traded company. These exaggerated profits with little investment shown in the spam message may tempt users, especially with Diwali round the corner, to use the opportunity to earn quick bucks." He added, "However, users need to understand that such promotions are meant to artificially increase the stock price, albeit temporarily. Operators of the spam drive sell their stocks, leaving the investors at a loss."
According to IT experts, spam mails are generally pumped into cyber space using botnets or zombie computers, which have been infected in some bot attack launched by cyber criminals. Cyber criminals create a large database of active bot infected computers to launch spam attacks, virus attacks, phishing, online cheating and other illegal purposes.
India has been ranked second in the amount of spam sent into cyber space and has one of highest number of zombie computers which send out the spam. Out of the infected active zombie computers involved in sending spam in India 50% are in Mumbai.
It is being suspected that the IT firm, to influence the market by sending spam mails and get its stock purchased, has hired services of cyber criminals who are sending these mails through zombie computers under their control.
The email also carries details; like if a person invests 0.75 paise for short term period the profits earned would be around Rs4 while for mid-term it would be Rs7 and for long term it could fetch around Rs15.
These emails come with subject lines like 'Indian shares with 800% gain potential', 'Best Indian stock on the NSE market' or 'India's most secret pennystock'.
Another IT expert said, "Of the total emails received by Indian users this year 90% was spam, while of the spam emails sent into cyber space across the globe, 10% was related to the financial sector." He added, "Use of zombie computers to launch attacks on rivals or competitors has been there since quite some time but it is very rare where a firm is trying to influence its stock prices."
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