Hackers spreading ransomware targeted the Indian flood monitoring system and reports are in that they are demanding bitcoins as a ransom for decryption. A police case was registered on this note in the state of Goa in India and soon the news went viral.
Water Resources Department of Goa has confirmed the news and is concerned that the incident took place during the rainy season when the whole of Maharashtra was already flooding.
Reports are in that the servers of Flood Monitoring System were hit by the file-encrypting malware on June 21st,2022 and the hackers are demanding BTC in double-digit figures to free data from encryption.
Interestingly, an executive from the engineering wing is readily accepting the fact that the servers were ill-protected with antivirus software and were operating on firewalls that were obsolete. And what’s more pathetic about the story is that the department has no dedicated IT staff or security professional to react to such situations.
As the backup data is also compromised, the disaster recovery plan related to information is jeopardized.
Goa’s Flood Monitoring System is installed at 15 places, is connected to all major rivers in the state, and is consolidated at a data center in Panaji. Officials are not interested in paying a ransom to hackers and are sure to recover the locked-up data by other means.
Unconfirmed sources state that the information was also being saved on a simultaneous note at a different center as a part of a business continuity plan and so recovery of information is 100% possible.
