It is feared that the disruption caused to CAT-2009, which is being held online for the first time, was the work of a ‘zero-day’ hacker. A city-based cyber expert told DNA on the condition of anonymity that it was possible that such a hacker had broken into the private server used for the examination.
“He would then analyse the software being used for the test to find its security loopholes, and then used the chinks to launch a virus attack,” the expert said. A ‘zero-day’ virus takes advantage of security loopholes that are not known to others, not even to the company or people who had written the software, the expert said. As no security fix is immediately available for such loopholes, the virus is able to break into the application and perform illegal functions, including theft of information, he added.
The US company, Prometric, has already said that two well-known computer viruses — Conflicker and W32.NIMDA — were responsible for the disruption caused to CAT-2009. The cyber expert said that the server used by Prometric must have been secure from virus attacks.
