Delhi Police on Friday said it has registered a case on the complaint of the National Informatics Centre (NIC) about a suspected malware attack after one of its staffers faced difficulty in accessing his official email account on a computer.
An email was sent to the official ID of an NIC staffer and when the receiver clicked on the link, it appeared that the malware had set in on that particular computer, a senior police officer said, and claimed that there is no loss of NIC data.
An FIR was registered in the first week of September on the complaint of the NIC, following which Delhi Police investigated the matter and identified the source, he said. However, the police said they cannot disclose the source yet as they are proceeding further in their investigation.
Unsubstantiated reports
The reports being carried in certain sections of the media about widespread cyber intrusion involving high offices are unsubstantiated and do not reflect the current stage of investigation, the police said in a statement.
The National Informatics Centre (NIC) of the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology provides network backbone and e-governance support to Central and State governments, UT administrations, districts and other government bodies.
In a statement, Additional PRO of Delhi Police Anil Mittal said: “A government employee had recently reported that he was having difficulty in accessing his official email account by the NIC, which was lying unused for some weeks. It was found by the NIC that there was an attempted breach by unidentified cyber actors — a kind of regular activity over cyberspace — which was, however, detected by its robust cybersecurity systems.”
Mr. Mittal said that as a precaution, a formal investigation into the matter has been launched and a case was registered by Delhi Police’s Special Cell.