Cyber attack cripples Uttarakhand’s govt systems, 192 websites shut down The recent cyber attack crippled the government systems in Uttarakhand, closing down 192 websites. A serious case of cyber insecurity caught this hill state at its weakest moment. Preliminary investigations reveal that the attackers managed to get into the Disaster Recovery centre in Bengaluru from where they were going forward, says Nitika Khandelwal, director of the Uttarakhand Information Technology Development Agency ITDA. It is learnt that a private company had been managing a 2-3 virtual machines inside the centre with malware. From here, it spread to the main data center in Dehradun and thus attacked government websites and their operations.
This attack is believed to be a form of ransomware. The responses on the case were immediate in regards to the isolation and containment of the breach. Ransomware usually encrypts files or locks systems in exchange for the ransom to restore the systems, but this time it had affected the core governmental systems that normally cause an overall services shutdown meant to be offered by these websites. Most of the affected websites offer public service; hence, the shutdown was a significant issue not only to the state but to its people.
The firm official said a full-fledged probe was under way to fully understand the complete breach as well as its ramifications. Cyber security experts were going through logs and attack patterns in tracing the origin of malware and how security protocols at Bengaluru DR were bypassed. The DR centre plays a very important role in supporting the primary data centre at Dehradun and ensures continuity of systems in case of failures or disasters.
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The fact that a private firm deals with the DR centre brings another dimension into the investigation. The security standards of the company would most probably be called to question, and at times, if the protocol they have in place was breached, this would have led to such a catastrophe. Attackers now target backup systems because they tend to be considered weaker when comparing the security defenses to primary data centers.
This is a reminder of the growing threat of ransomware attacks on government systems, an increasingly global phenomenon. Governments around the world place significant dependence on digital infrastructure for public services in many countries, which may be seriously disrupted if the backups or recovery systems were compromised.
Increased scrutiny of the cybersecurity measures deployed will be expected by the authorities in Uttarakhand and Bengaluru while trying to resolve this issue. Again, the government will have to evaluate its disaster recovery protocols, security on virtual machines, as well as its partnership with private companies in the management of critical data infrastructure to be put in place so that such breaches are avoided in future.
