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The website of 'Hello Sarkar', which is used by the citizens to submit their complaints to the government regarding government mechanisms and other matters, has been launched after almost two weeks.
The Russian hacker group 'Ghudra' claimed that the portal, which is under the office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers, is under its control. The government has formed a committee to study the hacked website and put it back into operation.
A committee consisting of Subas Dhakal, Joint Secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet Office, Director General of Information Technology Department, Joint Secretary of Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Head of Integrated Data Management Center, Director of National Cyber Security Center and representative of Cyber Bureau was formed on the cause of hacking and solutions.
A committee meeting was held at the Prime Minister's Office only on Monday. Shortly after that, Hello Sarkar's website came into operation . Director of Cyber Security Center Rajkumar Maharjan, who is also the coordinator of the committee, told Kantipur that although the system is operating now, they are serious about preventing such problems from occurring in the future.
'A committee has been formed to study this incident, we are studying it in detail,' Maharjan said, 'We are also serious about not allowing such problems to occur in the coming days.' Hacker group 'Ghudra' claimed to have taken control of the entire system of the Hello government and released a screenshot with the details that only 8.32 GB is free in the server storage of 49.98 GB capacity. The hacker also claimed to have a backup of the entire database .
The hacker posted a link to his Telegram channel on BreachForum and mentioned that he would sell all the data of the Hello government for $1,000. It was mentioned that those who want to get direct access (live cell access) to Naver server will have to pay 1300 dollars . The government did not give any notice or information about the website and the social media platforms related to Hello Sarkar being inactive.
A cyber security expert informed that the root cause of this hack is the old technology used on the website. "This website was using an outdated framework like Laravel 5.0 for years," he said, "Laravel framework has now reached the 12th version . The government was running the 5th version. It is easy to get hacked because the developers suggest to upgrade the system because of the vulnerability due to the old version.
Even though the government has established a separate center for cyber security, it has not been provided with sufficient infrastructure and manpower. Currently there are only three engineers in the cyber security center and the center does not even have its own office. This also demonstrates the government's willingness to invest in the digital security of government institutions.
