New Delhi: The ongoing cyber war between Indian and Pakistani has escalated on Thursday with a Pakistani group constantly bombarding to sneak into the Delhi police control room.
A senior police Delhi police official said that the cyber cell of the police is ready to deal with virtual threat. Pakistani hackers could not breach the system and there was no data loss or any disruption.
“We have customised our system in such a way that it will not get effected by such hacking attempts. Hackers are continuously bombarding to take control over Delhi police control room, but they will never succeed,” said a senior official with the police control room.
Cyber-attackers who identified themselves as the “Pakistan Cyber Army” also claimed to have gained access of global positioning system (GPS) sever of PCR vans of some state police. Indian cyber experts have also confirmed that there was breach in the GPS servers, but claims of getting access by Pakistani hackers was fake.
The Delhi police control room witnessed one of such cyber attempt before January 26 this year when hackers tried to sneak into the system, but the attempt was foiled by alert officials and Delhi police website was shut down immediately as a precautionary measure. The website was restored with in a few hours.
“A SIT was formed to identify the hackers and they were found stationed in Russia and Germany. After that we have issued fresh guidelines to entire staff and cyber security system was enhanced. We block IP addresses that attempt to hack the system,” added the senior police official.
For full proof safety, computer system at the Delhi police control room are not connected to Internet. Entire system work on home network that protects it from getting hacked, it is isolated from outer world.
“We get connect to Internet only through high security fire wall that is restricted to selected system only. We have also made several other channels on standby to deal with any untoward situation. We also have analogue system to answer emergency calls in case present system get effected to any virus or get hacked,” said a senior police official.
Meanwhile, GPS tracking of all police vehicles is also secured with extra safety measures. The entire GPS tracking system works on different network that is not connected to Internet.
“Hackers tried sneak from applications available for public and try to crash the system but all of such efforts are in vain,” added police official.
Indian hackers have hacked into the Pakistan government network, locking their computers and data. In retaliation Pakistani hacker has claimed to have gained access to Global Positioning System (GPS) of police vehicles but refused to furnish details of states and exact numbers of cars location compromised by them.
Recently, Pakistani hacker has raised a serious concern as the Pakistani hacker – Fakir has claims to have gained access to servers which maintains data and information about location of police van.
Fakir claims that he can track the location of the vehicles and can spot where the vehicles are actually roaming around. He further claimed that he could halt these vehicles as well. To confirm his attack he also shared a screenshot in which locations of close to 40 vehicles in Madhya Pradesh was shared.
Experts in India confirmed that there was breach and termed it as ‘critical’ but rubbished the claims of getting control over the police vans.
“The hacker got access to the server which stores the data but actual magnitude of loss of information is yet to be confirmed. He got access to location of police van, which is a sensitive data but the attack was limited to Madhya Pradesh,” said Delhi based cyber expert, Amit Dubey.
(This story originally appeared in the Asian Age)
