The official website of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), which was targeted for hacking by cyber criminals multiple times on November 30, is safe, news agency ANI reported, quoting official sources. The website is hosted by the National Informatics Centre, a department under the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology that provides infrastructure and information technology services to central government departments and state governments.
The ICMR website's firewall, which monitors and filters incoming and outgoing network traffic based on some pre-established policies, is from the NIC, and is regularly updated.
The official sources said the NIC was alerted through email regarding a cyber attack. The NIC has now reported that the attack was prevented, and ICMR has found its official website in order.
A government official from the NIC told news agency PTI that on November 30, cyber hackers tried to attack ICMR's website more than 6,000 times in a span of 24 hours.
The official also said that the contents of the ICMR website are safe, and the attack has been prevented successfully.
A few days ago, the servers of AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences) Delhi were also hacked. According to an IANS report, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology said the ransomware attack on the servers of AIIMS Delhi was definitely a part of a larger conspiracy.
According to a PTI report, the hackers who attempted a cyber attack on the ICMR website were apparently from Hong Kong. However, their attempts to breach the website have been foiled, the government official said.