India Hit By 375 Cyberattacks Daily In 2020, Says Cyber Security Coordinator

The pandemic has surely come as a curse for Indian cybersecurity as there is a surge in cyberattacks in the country. 

Throwing light on these attacks, National Cyber Security Coordinator Lt Gen (retd) Rajesh Pant said cyberattacks have gone up manifold and every day, four lakh pieces of malware are found and 375 cyberattacks are witnessed.

Speaking at an event, he reiterated, “In such unprecedented times, you mentioned two Cs the challenge of Corona and challenge of cyber. Actually, at the perch which I sit, there are 3 Cs. The third ‘C’ ofcourse is on our northern border, which is another challenge that we are facing. In such an environment, cyberattacks have gone up multi-fold. There are four lakh malwares, we find everyday and 375 cyberattacks take place (daily).”

People should be very careful about hoax calls and click-baits whose sole intention is to dig information from an internet user, he suggested.

“This disease of just clicking on the link, this is another reason where the malware drops,” he said, asking everybody to study the recent cases of frauds at City Union Bank where a person entered the core banking system through a click, and also the ones at Bangladesh Bank and Cosmos Bank.

Recently, grocery delivery platform Bigbasket faced a data breach from the hacking group “Shinyhunters” where over 2 Cr users’ data was compromised in the attack. 

On October 16, US-based cybersecurity firm Cyble reported a data breach on PM Modi’s website narendramodi.in, believed to have impacted 5 lakh users which shows the poor cybersecurity infrastructure in the country.

Haldiram’s also witnessed a ransomware attack on its servers by unidentified hackers who have allegedly stolen crucial data and demanded a ransom of $7,50,000.

Several Indian platforms in the past have seen data breaches. Earlier in May, it was reported that data of 4.75 crore Truecaller Indian users was found to be up for sale on the dark web. The development which was denied by the Swedish mobile application platform Truecaller India, was a result from its data leak.

Government data shows that in 2019 alone, India witnessed 3.94 lakh instances of cybersecurity breaches. In terms of hacking of state and central government websites, Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) data shows that a total of 336 websites belonging to central ministries, departments and state governments were hacked between 2017 and 2019.

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