ONLINE war games akin to PUBG requiring chats with partners anonymous or otherwise have emerged as a key communication channel for terror groups and Pakistan’s ISI to convey messages to their recruits in Jammu and Kashmir, officials here said. As terror groups operating across the border seek to bypass social media and conventional channels of communication and escape scrutiny by security agencies, it is a virtual battleground and in some cases a real one too. Four cases have been been identified, the officials said. In one case, an underage boy was being radicalised by his gaming partner sitting across the border. The boy was handed over to parents after proper counselling of the entire family.

 

The gaming chat applications allow players to communicate with each other in real time in the guise of playing online games, the officials explained without going into details of which game and how. These applications, which facilitate voice, video, and text-based communication to enhance teamwork, strategy discussions and social interaction among players, are being used for different purposes, they said. The prospective recruits are identified during playing. The gaming applications have been increasingly incorporating encryption to protect user communications but the level of security varies widely. So, some games use basic encryption for in-game voice chat and others offer more robust end-to-end encryption for text and voice.

 

There are also applications that allow for self-destructing messages. Though several of these gaming applications are banned in India, they are downloaded using Virtual Private Network (VPN) illegally. A VPN creates a secure and encrypted connection over the internet by masking Internet Protocol addresses and encrypts online traffic, making it more difficult to track online activity and access data.