Indian Embassy's website hacked by Chinese hackers

E-mail IDs of senior officers cloned to.com or gmail

PTI | April 19, 2010



The website of the Indian Embassy here has been attacked twice by Chinese hackers, prompting the mission to boost its cyber security.

Reliable sources in the Indian Embassy said at least two cyber attacks were traced to Chinese servers, but denied leakage of any confidential information, which is processed by "standalone" computers.

The embassy's Local Area Network (LAN) also has no direct internet access and the firewall has been fortified, they said, adding the only hacking victim was the official website, maintained by the information wing.

The website allows for online filling of visa and passport applications.

"The indianembassy.ru website in the public domain was affected to some extent that e-mail IDs of the senior officials were cloned in the .com or gmail domains to spread the malware," the sources said.

"For example for the legitimate 'infowing@indianembassy.ru', IDs like 'infowing@indianembassy.com' and 'infowing@gmail.com' were used to spread spam with malware," the sources said.

In a recent incident, the 'Daily Media Digest' issued by the Information Wing in the evening was received by its recipients, including Moscow-based Indian journalists, early morning and instead of word document, it had RAR archive arrangement.

The prompt warning circulated by the embassy not to open the attachment saved many computers from the fresh lot of malware.

The incident assumes significance in the wake of a report about alleged Chinese cyber espionage which has infected scores of Indian government and defence related sites.

US and Canada based Information Warfare Monitor and Shadowservers Foundation in their report 'Shadows in the Cloud' had traced China's Chengdu based servers of ex-filtering sensitive information from the Indian computers, including Indian diplomatic missions in Moscow, London and Washington.

Commenting on the report, Russian media had raised concerns about sensitive and secret information about Moscow and New Delhi's defence cooperation falling into the Chinese hands.

Kommersant daily had said even in the cyber age the Russian missions use well tried method of using old typewriters and a sheet of paper to guard their secret information.

 

Comments

 

Other News

What really happened in ‘The Scam That Shook a Nation’?

The Scam That Shook a Nation By Prakash Patra and Rasheed Kidwai HarperCollins, 276 pages, Rs 399 The 1970s were a

Report of India’s G20 Task Force on Digital Public Infrastructure released

The final ‘Report of India’s G20 Task Force on Digital Public Infrastructure’ by ‘India’s G20 Task Force on Digital Public Infrastructure for Economic Transformation, Financial Inclusion and Development’ was released in New Delhi on Monday. The Task Force was led by the

How the Great War of Mahabharata was actually a world war

Mahabharata: A World War By Gaurang Damani Sanganak Prakashan, 317 pages, Rs 300 Gaurang Damani, a Mumbai-based el

Budget expectations, from job creation to tax reforms…

With the return of the NDA to power in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, all eyes are now on finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s full budget for the FY 2024-25. The interim budget presented in February was a typical vote-on-accounts, allowing the outgoing government to manage expenses in

How to transform rural landscapes, design 5G intelligent villages

Futuristic technologies such as 5G are already here. While urban users are reaping their benefits, these technologies also have a potential to transform rural areas. How to unleash that potential is the question. That was the focus of a workshop – “Transforming Rural Landscape:

PM Modi visits Rosatom Pavilion at VDNKh in Moscow

Prime minister Narendra Modi, accompanied by president Vladimir Putin, visited the All Russian Exhibition Centre, VDNKh, in Moscow Tuesday. The two leaders toured the Rosatom Pavilion at VDNKh. The Rosatom pavilion, inaugurated in November 2023, is one of the largest exhibitions on the histo

Visionary Talk: Amitabh Gupta, Pune Police Commissioner with Kailashnath Adhikari, MD, Governance Now


Archives

Current Issue

Opinion

Facebook Twitter Google Plus Linkedin Subscribe Newsletter

Twitter