For 6 Hours, 10 Ministry Websites Turn Dysfunctional After Alleged Hack: How Government Responded
At least 10 government portals turned dysfunctional between 2:30 pm to 8:30 pm on Friday.
New Delhi, April 7: 10 government portals including those of the crucial Defence, Home Affairs, Labour and Law went down on Friday after an alleged hack. The sites could be restored only after six hours, subsequent to which the government issued an official statement refuting the reports of cyberattack.
The cyber security department at the Prime Minister's Office said the websites were temporarily down due to "technical glitches". There was a "hardware failure" in Drupal - the content management system or CMS of the government portals - which led to the sites going down, said Gulshan Rai, chief of cyber security in the PMO.
In a separate statement issued, the Ministry of Home Affairs categorically dismissed the reports of its website being hacked. "There is no hacking of the ministry website," the MHA said, further adding that the National Informatics Centre (NIC), which manages the website, is upgrading the system which led to the glitches.
Defence Minister earlier claimed the website was hacked
Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's tweet, posted within an hour after the websites went down, said the Ministry of Defence portal (mod.gov.in) was hacked by miscreant elements.
All the ten government portals were dysfunctional between 2:30 pm to 8:30 pm. According to cyber-experts, the technical glitches caused due to upgradation process are rarely reported at the peak of working hours.
The websites displayed Japanese characters which led Twitterati to speculate whether hackers across the border in China have invaded the government portals.
Warnings were issued
The CERT or the Computer Emergency Response Team - the government's official unit to address cybersecurity threats and attacks - had issued a warning on Friday, hours before the websites went down.
The notification issued by CERT warned of a "vulnerability" in the malware protection engine, which could allow a "remote attacker to execute code on the target system".
A note of caution was also issued by the Drupal group - the CMS manager of government portals - claiming a “highly critical risk” on the earlier versions of the CMS platform.
According to the data released by the Centre, the government websites were hacked on 114 occasions between April 2017 to January 2018.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 07, 2018 10:08 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).