Cyber attack on Ministry of External Affairs server, data breached and put on sale: Report

New Delhi, Jan 25: In a big threat to national security, the e-mail server of the Ministry of External Affairs was recently hacked. Reportedly, the hackers put the information obtained on sale after it was breached.

 

The info put on sale includes email IDs and passwords of at least 15 bureaucrats and a BJP Minister who gets updates direct from the intelligence wing.

 

 

According to the Cybersecurity Insiders report, the data is being sold for Rs 6 lakhs to 22 lakhs- appx 2 million and cyber criminals from nations like China, Pakistan, and Afghanistan are showing a lot of interest in purchasing the info.

 

 

The attack occurred when the Indian government was said to receive a detailed report on last year’s cyber attack on AIIMS servers. North Korea’s Lazarus Group is suspected to be behind the incident, though an official conformation is awaited, the report said.

 

On January 24, the US Law enforcement agency FBI announced that the $100m hack of June last year, where criminals siphoned around $100m Ethereum, was conducted by the Lazarus Gang and they claim to have enough evidence to prove that the gang was behind the heist.

 

This came after it laundered the stolen funds from January 13th of this year that came to the notice of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Lazarus used RAILGUN, a new protocol, to obscure its transactions with the victim and even tried their level best to swap the stolen crypto from about 11 Ethereum addresses with Bitcoins.