The Karnataka government’s e-Procurement portal for tenders has become the target of cyber attack. The e-Procurement portal of the state government has been shut temporarily from the last six days, following the detection of external cyber attack, reported Bangalore Mirror.
The portal was shut down temporarily for system repairs. "A police complaint has been filed with the cyber police station and matter has also been reported to CERT-In. Soon after CERT-In enquiry is over and system is hardened as per CERT-In recommendations, the eProc application would be restored in a couple of days," he said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far.
According to the chief executive officer of the e-Governance Centre, all tender processes in Karnataka as per Karnataka Transparency in Public Procurement Act were functioning well for the last eight years.
The last instance of a government-run website being hacked in the state happened in August 2016. The Mysore University website was breached and defaced for about 8 hours, after hackers claiming to be from an Islamic group posted ‘jihadi literature’ on the homepage.
The hackers had then identified themselves as the `Tunisian cyber resistance al-Fallaga Team' and their message called for an end to sectarian killings in Myanmar.
Before that, in June 2016, the state police website was hacked. In that breach, the ksp.gov.in website was claimed by one “Faisal 1337”.
A Pakistani flag was put in the middle of the website and a text ran, “We are team Pak Cyber Attackers, # Pakitan Zindabad”.
However, it is not that only Karnataka government websites became the target of cyber criminals. A total of 25 websites of central ministries and state governments were hacked in the first five months of 2019 alone. This was revealed by IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in the Rajya Sabha.