Hackers broke into email accounts of bureaucrats and army officials
NEW DELHI: The government of India’s secure internet servers, hosting official email and other critical data, have come under waves of attack from international hackers over the past two months. Most of these attacks, authoritative sources told DNA, are originating from China.
These cyber attacks are deemed to be a much more serious threat to national security than the usual defacement of government websites, which are frequent and not so organised. Sources told DNA that recent intrusions and hacking of the National Informatics Centre (NIC) network could be part of an organised probe to check the level of cyber and network security of the Indian government.
BK Gairola, director-general of NIC, confirmed the attacks but said nothing major was compromised. He told DNA: “The attacks have been controlled and effective mechanisms are being put in place. Some email addresses of senior bureaucrats were hacked, but those email accounts were not sensitive.” Gairola refused to get into the number of email accounts hacked.
“Indian government’s networks are being attacked in a similar fashion to those of the US, UK and other countries, presumably by Chinese hackers. However, it would be foolish to assume that our state secrets have been stolen. One theory doing the rounds internationally is that the Chinese are assessing the network strength of prominent countries by attacking them,” says professor N Balakrishnan, associate director, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
He adds that steps are being taken to fight the attacks, but declined to divulge more. Balakrishnan is one of the country’s top scientists working in the area of computer and network security. He is closely involved in an advisory role with the Union government on sensitive issues.
In the attacks over the last eight weeks, e-mail accounts of 200 top Indian ministers, bureaucrats and senior officers of the armed forces have been captured and compromised.
