Just days after reports said the websites of the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Law and Justice and Ministry of Home Affairs were hacked, a former home secretary recalled how staff watching pornographic content at work compromised systems and servers, PTI reported.
“When I was the Union home secretary almost eight to nine years ago, every 60 days we would find entire computers compromised,” GK Pillai said at a conclave in Mumbai on Wednesday.
Pillai said the porn sites were mostly accessed by subordinate staff while senior officials of the home ministry were busy in meetings. “So what will they (subordinates) do?,” asked Pillai, who now chairs the non-profit Data Security Council of India promoted by Nasscom. “They go and open the internet and they are on porn sites, and download all sorts of things that come up with all the malware.” Pillai said the matter came to light after the ministry conducted a detailed review.
On April 6, Chinese characters appeared on the home page of the defence ministry’s website, while the other two ministry websites were also temporarily down.
Although the cyber security department and the National Informatics Centre claimed the websites were down because of some “technical issue”, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Twitter that her ministry’s website had been hacked.
On Wednesday, Pillai said the Data Security Council of India has recommended making it mandatory for the boards of companies to review cyber security and submit a report on how prepared they are to handle such cases. He, however, added that the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Securities and Exchange Board of India and the Reserve Bank of India were sitting on the proposal.
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