The intrusion by foreign hackers is not just limited to government servers. Personal emails of several senior government functionaries have been hacked into.
Mani Shankar Aiyar one of the victims
NEW DELHI: The intrusion by foreign hackers in recent days is not just limited to government servers. Personal emails of several senior government functionaries, including Union ministers and secretaries, have been hacked into in recent days.
It is yet not clear if Chinese hackers—DNA had reported on Tuesday that they have unleashed a wave of attacks on Indian government networks—are also behind the intrusion into personal emails, especially Google’s gmail, sources said.
The information technology ministry has received nearly 100 complaints from senior government officials and private parties about their email accounts being hacked. Among the victims is Union panchayats and sports minister Mani Shankar Aiyar, dependable sources in the government told DNA.
Besides, sources say, unknown attackers have also broken into thousands of gmail addresses belonging to Indian citizens in the last one month. Official sources declined to talk more about the case citing the confidentiality concerns of VIPs.
“Personal gmail accounts held by a number of secretary-level officers have been compromised,” the official added.
One of the senior officials privy to the problem said: “We have officially received 100-odd complaints so far.” Another official dismissed the possibility of an organised cyber attack like the ones reportedly involving the Chinese: “Vulnerabilities are regularly reported by the Indian government on the website of the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT).”
The attacks are a consequence of Google’s security vulnerabilities being exposed all over the Internet. “The issue was reported on our website. CERT works on principles of confidentiality and I cannot share anything more than what is on our website,” CERT director Dr Gulshan Rai told DNA.
On September 27, CERT put up the following notice on its site: “Multiple vulnerabilities have been reported in a wide range of Google products such as Google Search Appliance, Google (Blogspot) Polls Application, Google’s Picasa photo-sharing software, Google’s Urchin Analytics service, including a persistent email theft issue affecting the widely used gmail service.”
Google has, however, denied any instance of hacking. “The vulnerability mentioned in a section of the media was never exploited as it was rectified in time. No email accounts have been hacked,” a Google India spokesperson said.
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