Indian Revenue Service Website Reportedly Hacked by Pakistan-Based Group
It has come to light that the official web portal of the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) has been hacked in what is supposed to be an attack made by fringe online groups either belonging to or operating from Pakistan. Officials smelled troubled in the website early on Saturday when they lost control of it and observed offensive messages such as "Pakistan Zindabad" and "We are team Pak cyber attacker".
As it turns out, the portal has been rendered inaccessible since then. Fortunately there have been signs of a recovery and the website has put up an apology message for the inconvenience caused while also claiming that it is "performing maintenance at the moment".
The website, #-Link-Snipped-# acts as an official communication link for all work between the Central Board of Direct Taxes and IT department field. Naturally, the situation is alarming and poses strategic as well as financial threat to the IRS, solely because of the large number and magnitude of monetary transactions that are supposed to take place through the portal each moment.
Following the development, the website's technical team sent a report to the Computer Emergency Response Team of India (CERT-In) which is the nodal agency authorized to combat hacking, phishing and to fortify security-related defences of the Indian internet domain.
The team is also conducting a security audit on the portal, and officials maintain no sensitive security information has been risked on the URL of the IRS community, implying that no significant losses will be inflicted even as the situation looks out of bounds at this point.
The IRS hack comes only days after BBC online services were brought down by an anti-ISIS group, exposing the vulnerabilies of sensitive online services to hacker groups.
Source: <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/irs-income-tax-department-indian-government/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Pakistani hackers could be behind IRS website takedown | India News,The Indian Express</a>
As it turns out, the portal has been rendered inaccessible since then. Fortunately there have been signs of a recovery and the website has put up an apology message for the inconvenience caused while also claiming that it is "performing maintenance at the moment".
The website, #-Link-Snipped-# acts as an official communication link for all work between the Central Board of Direct Taxes and IT department field. Naturally, the situation is alarming and poses strategic as well as financial threat to the IRS, solely because of the large number and magnitude of monetary transactions that are supposed to take place through the portal each moment.
Following the development, the website's technical team sent a report to the Computer Emergency Response Team of India (CERT-In) which is the nodal agency authorized to combat hacking, phishing and to fortify security-related defences of the Indian internet domain.
The team is also conducting a security audit on the portal, and officials maintain no sensitive security information has been risked on the URL of the IRS community, implying that no significant losses will be inflicted even as the situation looks out of bounds at this point.
The IRS hack comes only days after BBC online services were brought down by an anti-ISIS group, exposing the vulnerabilies of sensitive online services to hacker groups.
Source: <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/irs-income-tax-department-indian-government/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Pakistani hackers could be behind IRS website takedown | India News,The Indian Express</a>
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