By Arun Pratap Singh
Dehradun, 4 Oct: Uttarakhand Government’s web system remained cripped for the second day today after a severe cyber attack yesterday. A large number of web portals of the state government and the district administrations related to various public services remained down for last 24 hours. Though a team of cyber experts are trying their best to revive the portals, not much success has been achieved so far towards restoration of the web portals. However, the sources in the government claim that despite the inability of those trying to log into the portals, the data remains safe.
By this evening, a total of 186 portals and apps related to various departments are being gradually restarted after scanning. The SWAN network has already been reopened. However, despite these efforts, various web portals offering crucial public services remain inaccessible and inoperative. They include portals like the Chief Minister’s helpline and e-office functions.
Experts from the Uttarakhand IT Department, along with central agency experts, are investigating the virus that infiltrated the system. Currently, even the ITDA has not been able to trace the origin of this virus. However, it is certain that the virus has disrupted the entire state’s government e-system. The e-office work is totally crippled and is yet to be restored. It is reported that the ITDA had received information about a virus entering the government server. As a precautionary measure, all applications related to the state’s e-office were shut down. The entire state system is connected to the SWAN network. Consequently, when this network was brought down, all online work across the state came to a complete halt.
Since the virus was detected, many experts have been working on it, trying to determine its origin. Currently, the ITDA does not consider it a cyber attack. According to ITDA Director Nitika Khandelwal, it is difficult to comment on the virus at this time. Besides Uttarakhand’s IT experts, central agency experts are also working on this virus. They are trying to ascertain whether it was a cyber attack or where the virus originated. However, the department’s priority is to restart the entire system.
Meanwhile, it should be matter of great relief fore the government that the ITDA experts have confirmed that the data is not affected as the result of this virus attack. The experts have also claimed that after scanning all applications and 700 virtual machines today, the entire system will be restarted.
