Hyderabad water board’s website ‘hacked’

Hyderabad: The Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply & Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) website was compromised on Friday. The website’s URLs were redirected to poker and rummy betting websites.

The URLs were displayed on Google search engine, and its news service Google News. On Google News, HMWS&SB’s redirected URLs were prominently displayed on its “technology” section, with tens of casino and betting-bearing titles under its name.

Once clicked, a placeholder web page popped up welcoming "Dear VIP customer,” to a betting website and offering a million dollar prize money.

All the URLs of HMWS&SB displayed on Google News are redirected to the betting platform.

HMWS&SB, in an official statement, said that they have not found any direct attack to its websites, and said “due to some technical glitches, few pages of HMWSSB website were getting redirected to unintended websites.”

Officials also said that after identifying the issue, they informed the State Data Centre and the Telangana Security Operations Centre (TSOC) for remedial measures. As a precautionary measure, they also took down the website.

“HMWS&SB’s technical team is vigorously working on this issue. HMWS&SB wants to assure its consumers that they need not panic, as there will be no impact on the regular services, and information of the consumers is safe,” the official statement read.