Goods and Services tax network shortly known as GSTN was targeted by a cyber attack in wee hours of yesterday, i.e. January 1st,2021. However, the good news is that no sensitive information was access to hackers.
Confirmed sources say that the attack was of DDoS genre where large amounts of fake internet traffic are targeted onto the servers in a network, eventually causing disruption to genuine traffic.
All the sensitive information about the 1.37 crore tax payers is said to be safe as of now, as the GSTN authorities claim that data theft did not take place in the incident.
But there is a mystery surrounding the incident on how the Indian tax paying network became a target to a Distributed denial of service attack surpassing its 8 layer security.
Obviously, many tax payers expressed their concerns over the robustness of the security system of GSTN against hacking attempts.
Note 1- Nowadays, information regarding a taxpayer’s name, address, contact number and GSTN number against a business establishment is up for sale for less than $1 on the dark web. And incidents such as these could encourage the threat of actors to flourish more in their business.
Note 2- GST is a consumption tax imposed on Indian citizens for goods and services and has been functional since July 2017. The tax imposure is divided into 5 types- 0%, 5%,12%,18% and 28%. However, an exception from GST is given to petroleum products, alcohol based drinks, and electricity.
Note 3- The software for GSTN has been developed by Infosys Technologies and the wholesome network is being maintained by National Informatics Centre NIC.
