WannaCry Attack: Corporate Affairs Ministry's portal was hacked
India was one of the 150 countries, whose computer systems and networks were affected by the infamous WannaCry ransomware cyberattack that took place last month. According to IT security firm QuickHeal, over 48,000 Indian systems had been infected and now an official statement has been released, which says that Corporate Affairs Ministry's Portal MCA21 was one of them. Here's all you need to know.
One of the first attacks
The portal in question is MCA21, which is used by companies to make filings. The official statement said that it was "presumably" one of the first attacks on a central government portal and authorities took immediate measures to contain the impact of it. It cited that "the attack was in the nature of a 'zero day attack' and was first noticed on May 7."
Infosys shies away from commenting
A zero-day attack is one that is carried out by hackers exploiting a flaw in the software not known to the vendor, who has supplied it. The vendor here in question is Infosys, which manages MCA21 under the Companies Act and Limited Liability Partnership Act, 2008; when inquired for comments on the attack, the company replied that asking the ministry would be more fruitful.
Things are back to normal
The MCA21 portal typically receives 8,000 filings on a daily basis and certain documents related to the front and back office services got affected by this attack. The technical team responded and the government's cybersecurity arm, CERT-In was informed. They reformatted the system servers and redeployed the system. All services were restored entirely sans loss on May 12, according to the statement.
