Cyber Attacks Continue Globally

Russian Healthcare Ministry’s official website has been targeted by a large hacker attack, Oleg Salagai, head of the ministry’s public health and communications department, told Tass on Saturday.

“Russia Healthcare Ministry’s technical services have repelled cyber attacks, the largest in recent years,” he said.

On Friday night, the healthcare ministry’s information assets were hit by a Distributed Denial of Service attack with four million requests per minute at its height. The ministry’s site was not functioning for 14 minutes during the DDoS attack, he said.

“The (cyber) attack had no consequences. However, the work of the ministry’s official website was temporarily suspended,” he said, adding “neither personal data nor medical confidential information were affected since they are stored in a protected area, not connected to the Internet.”

Minister Veronika Skvortsova ordered to put the ministry’s information assets to an additional test. “They are functioning normally now,” Salagai said.

In related news, PTI reported that in India, at a time when government is pushing for digitalized economy and Digital India, the Union Home Ministry’s website appeared hacked Saturday, which according to reports prompted the authorities to temporarily block the site. 

According to Times Now, the website of ministry of home affairs was hacked and Delhi police has launched an investigating into the matter. 

As per reports, the MHA website was immediately blocked by the National Informatics Center after hacking was noticed. The ministry said that the authorities are working on the website, and the site has been temporarily blocked for now. 

In January, suspected Pakistan-based operatives had hacked the website of National Security Guard and defaced it with comments against the prime minister and anti-India content. 

Last week, the home ministry had said in a written report to the Lok Sabha that more than 700 websites of various central and state government departments were hacked in the past four years and a total of 8,348 persons were arrested for their involvement in cyber crimes. 

Meanwhile, a Turkish hacker has been sentenced to eight years in a US prison for his role as one of the masterminds behind three cyber attacks that enabled $55 million to be siphoned from automated teller machines globally.

Ercan Findikoglu, who went by the online nicknames “Segate”, “Predator” and “Oreon”, was sentenced by US District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto in Brooklyn after pleading guilty in March to computer intrusion conspiracy and other charges.