In a major security breach, the Income Tax department’s Indian Revenue Service (IRS) website was hacked by suspected Pakistani groups on February 6. While the site was inaccessible for a long period of time, it is now up again.
Officials say slogans like ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ and ‘we are team Pak cyber attacker’ were posted by the hackers to the website. It’s primarily used as the official gateway between the Central Board of Direct Taxes and the IT department field offices in India. The attack led to the closing of the page with a message stating some maintenance was being performed.
The technical team handling the IRS portal has so far sent a report about the incident to the Computer Emergency Response Team of India (CERT-In). The authority is in charge of taking care of any security breaches such as phishing or hacking. An audit of the site is currently being undertaken.
According to PTI, no sensitive or secret data was uploaded on the url of the IRS community. This is good news, but the fact that the violation took place is a matter of great concern. This is the second security-related news concerning the Income Tax department which has emerged recently.
Also Read: Hackers now sending fake tax deduction emails
A report by Symantec had uncovered that cybercriminals were using fake tax deduction emails to hoodwink people into downloading malware which stole information from their device. This practice has been going on for more than 3 months. The message mimics the template utilized by the IT department to make it seem authentic.
Most of the emails have an unprotected attachment which contains a Trojan virus. This could help a person make out one from the other, as official missives always use password-protected files.