Cyber & Communications Security

GS Paper: GS Paper III | Subject: Internal Security | Last updated: 2026-06-26

Prelims

(Key facts, data, schemes, laws, organizations — MCQ-ready points)

Assam Police Crime Branch is probing students of two Guwahati schools who created and sold digitally-altered explicit ("deepfake") images of 64 schoolgirls & teachers on Telegram for ₹50–₹100; the school referred it to its Child Abuse Monitoring Committee
Highlights AI-image misuse, non-consensual synthetic media, minors as both victims and offenders, and platform (Telegram) accountability

At the NTA's request, the Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY) blocked Telegram across India until 22 June — the first time a messaging app at this scale has been blocked in India, even temporarily — to stop cheating rackets advertising fake NEET papers and defrauding candidates before the 21 June re-exam
Telegram founder Pavel Durov called it a "mistake" that "punishes" ~15 crore Indian users, saying the platform had removed hundreds of leak/scam channels and that "the leaks just moved to other apps"
Illustrates intermediary regulation, the blocking power under Section 69A of the IT Act, and the proportionality debate (targeting a whole platform vs specific channels)

Under Operation Chakra-VI, the CBI formed 60 special teams and searched 80+ locations across 15 States + Delhi in connection with 200+ cases of "digital arrest" fraud; 2 arrested (Naresh, Chennai; Sanjib Saha, Kolkata) for floating shell companies + "mule" bank accounts that laundered ~₹2 crore of proceeds of crime
Fraudsters uploaded forged documents (fake court/agency orders) and ran a fraudulent website mimicking the Supreme Court's to lend credibility; foreign nationals were also cheated — showing the scam's transnational reach
"Digital arrest" = victims are video-called by fake "police/CBI/ED" officials, told they are under investigation, kept under virtual "house arrest" and extorted; flagged earlier by the PM in Mann Ki Baat. Operation Chakra is the CBI's recurring drive against transnational cyber-enabled financial crime (with Interpol/FBI links)
Mule accounts = bank accounts (often of unwitting/paid individuals) used to layer and launder scam proceeds — a key choke-point for enforcement

(Analysis, dimensions, significance, critique, policy angles — for 10/15 mark answers)

An organised criminal industry, not lone hackers: Operation Chakra-VI reveals a division of labour — shell companies, mule-account networks, forged judicial documents, spoofed government websites — operating across States and borders, targeting Indians and foreigners. It converges cybercrime + financial crime + impersonation of the state
Enforcement bottlenecks: money is rapidly layered through mule accounts; perpetrators and servers sit abroad → needs bank-level KYC/mule-account detection, faster MLAT/Interpol cooperation, and victim-first measures (the 1930 cyber-fraud helpline / I4C). Public awareness ("police never arrest over video call") is the cheapest defence
UPSC angle: cyber-enabled financial fraud, CBI/I4C/MHA Cyber Coordination, mule accounts & money-laundering (PMLA), transnational crime & MLATs, digital literacy as cyber-defence

AI image tools have democratised non-consensual sexual imagery, with minors now both victims and offenders — a convergence of cybercrime + child protection + gender-based violence; existing law (IT Act/IT Rules, BNS, POCSO) struggles with the speed, anonymity, and cross-border nature of platforms like Telegram
Needs: rapid takedown + traceability obligations on intermediaries, deepfake detection/labelling, school-level digital literacy, and survivor-centric, non-stigmatising redress
UPSC angle: deepfakes/synthetic media, IT Rules & intermediary liability, POCSO & online child safety, AI governance, DPDP Act 2023