INDIAN GOVERNMENT AT RISK OF INDONESIAN HACKERS
Cyber-security research done on Friday revealed that a group of Indonesian hackers is planning to break into state and central government portals. It is also mentioned that they targeted nearly 1000 government portals including state and central.
A notice was issued by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C); it stated that the attack planned by the Indonesian cyber-attack group is targeting nearly 1,200 government websites. This attack is said to cause a major concern for both central and state governments as it is massive.
The CEO of Indusface, Ashish Tandon said that they are trying to rapidly advance down the path of digital transformation. He also stated that this situation is tough as the government doesn’t give attention to cybersecurity aspects.
On-premises tools and website hosting, are used by the majority of government agencies and are insufficient to combat such attacks. Tandon advised that the government should focus on shifting the weak digital infrastructure to the cloud as the attackers are using advanced cloud-based AI technology to launch their attacks.
In the notice by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), it was mentioned that a list of government websites was issued by the Indonesian hacktivist organization, quoting them as targets.
Last year i.e., in 2022, 19 ransomware attacks were reported to be done on various government websites. In the reported attacks, a massive attack on the All-India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) disrupted its systems and also led to the crippling of its centralized records.
Even this year in March, the Indian Health Ministry’s website was hit by some Russian hackers. Reports by CloudSEK cyber-security said that the group accessed the Indian Health Ministry website and comprised its Health Management Information System (HMIS). The group that attacked was – Phoneix, a Russian hacktivist group that was active since 2022 January.
It was also said that the Russians threatened to sell the license documents and Personally Identifiable Information (PII) on cybercrime forums. Also threatened to use the PII and other license documents to perform document fraud.
The question of cyber-security has always been in India. And day by day, year by year with the growing technology, it has become easy for hackers to launch their attacks on weak websites. It has been advised by the I4C many times that the government should not neglect or pay less attention to this aspect.
Let us hope that the government will take a closer look into the issue and get its cyber-guards high. Share your opinion about the issue in our comment section.