The website of the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (Bescom) was hacked on Monday evening. As a result, customers were unable to pay their bills or browse through the website as they were redirected initially to a webpage advertising a lottery and then to a YouTube video discussing bitcoins.
According to the website users, the website www.bescom.org became inaccessible sometime around 8.30 p.m. on Monday. Users were met with the defaced homepage.
“The payments sublink was also down through the night and on Tuesday morning. It was resolved at around 10 a.m. and I was able to make the bill payment,” said Rishi Singh, an electricity consumer.
Bescom confirmed that the website was hacked and that the technical team was trying to understand how it happened.
The website is managed by Pyrumas, a technical solutions provider. On Tuesday evening, the website for Pyrumas was flagged by Google as containing malware and some sections of the website were advertising web domains for sale.
“We have asked the company to give us a report listing how this happened. Once we get the report, we will have a complete picture of what happened,” said P. Rajendra Cholan, Managing Director, Bescom.
The payments section of the website redirects to another portal and a payment gateway which are unlikely to be affected, officials further said.