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ShareMumbai: Cyber criminals have hijacked the Mumbai police website and loaded it with malicious software that downloads automatically on to a user's computer without her consent. The software then uses the resources of the individual user's computer to create more havoc online by reaching out to friends and contacts of the user.
The security breach on the police website came to light when Google flagged it for being a potential threat to a user's computer.
To keep the browsing experience of users safe, Google checks websites randomly for the presence of malicious links and software. The search engine primarily checks if browsing a site results in the automatic download of malicious software on to the user's computer without her knowledge or consent.
The police website caught Google's eye on September 23 when the search engine found two pages there that resulted in malicious code being downloaded and installed on individual systems without the user's consent.
"The site has been hacked in the sense that someone has been able to add malicious code in the website," said Parikshit Chugh, a cyber security consultant based in Pune. "This is a common problem that many webmasters [engineers who manage a site] face regularly. It can be managed by testing the site regularly. Clearly, the Mumbai police haven't paid attention to their own site, resulting in this block by Google."
A note by Google, giving reasons for blocking the site, said, "The last time Google visited this site was on 2009-09-23, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2009-09-23."
Google has blocked the site and users who still want to access it are warned clearly that they are doing so at their own risk.
Users looking up the Mumbai police on Google can find links to the official website with a small note from Google saying 'This site may harm your computer.'
Firefox, the popular open-source browser from Mozilla, has also blocked the police website from direct access.
Google has also reported that while malicious software is hosted on the Mumbai police site, the site itself isn't acting as an intermediary in the spread of malware.
