Provident Fund Portal Hacked, 2.7 Crore People Face Data Theft
NEW DELHI: The personal and professional details of about 2.7 crore members registered with the retirement fund body Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) have been exposed to data theft.
In a letter to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the Central Provident Fund Commissioner has written that hackers have stolen data from the Aadhaar seeding portal of EPFO. He has also asked the ministry's technical team to plug vulnerabilities on the portal aadhaar.epfoservices.com that has now been temporarily shut. The portal links the Aadhaar number of employees with their provident fund accounts.
In the letter marked "secret", the commissioner wrote that the Intelligence Bureau (IB) had informed them of "hackers exploiting the vulnerabilities prevailing in the website (aadhaar.epfoservices.com) of EPFO."
Details of the scale of the breach are not known but the website contains information like the names and addresses of EPF subscribers besides their employment history.
"Each person contributes 12% of salary as provident fund, so salary details could also have been stolen. Also the bank account numbers as people tend to withdraw their PF," said cybersecurity expert Anand Venkatnarayan.
Hackers exploiting vulnerabilities, EPFO commissioner wrote to the government
A total of 114 government websites were hacked between April 2017 and January 2018, the Ministry of Electronics and IT told Lok Sabha in March.
On April 6, amidst reports that several websites including those of the ministries of defence, home and law had been hacked, the government had dismissed them as hardware problems.
Cyber security experts say monitoring is a big issue with government websites.
"The reason why these breaches happen is that the government is always reactive instead of being proactive. We never take security measures in initial stages. There should be a proper bug reporting mechanism also so that we can report to the government and they can secure their database," said Kshitij Adlakha, CEO of Cybersecurity firm Secugenius.
"No confirmed data leakage has been established or observed so far. As part of the data security and protection, EPFO has taken advance action by closing the server and host service through CSC (Common Service Centre) pending vulnerability checks, EPFO said in a statement.
The head of the Computer Emergency Response team of the Ministry of Electronics and IT, when contacted by NDTV, remained unavailable.
The body that governs Aadhaar, UIDAI, has clarified that it has nothing to do with the alleged data breach from aadhaar.epfoservices.com. "This matter does not pertain at all to any Aadhaar data breach from UIDAI servers. There is absolutely no breach into Aadhaar database of UIDAI. Aadhaar data remains safe and secure," it said.
Courtesy:NDTV
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K’taka HC judge whose controversial remarks triggered controversy expresses regret before open court
Bengaluru: Karnataka High Court judge, Justice V Srishananda, on Saturday expressed regret in open court after facing backlash over his controversial remarks in his recent court hearings, reported Bar and Bench.
Two purported video clips from Justice V Srishananda’s court hearing that show him making inappropriate comments went viral across social media platforms.
On Saturday, Justice Srishananda invited members of the Advocates Association, Bengaluru, and senior lawyers to his courtroom at 2:30 PM, where he read out a note expressing regret for inappropriate comments.
Quoting Advocates Association President Vivek Subba Reddy, Bar and Bench wrote, “He expressed regret for the comments and clarified that it was not his intention to offend any community or members of the Bar. He also requested the association to relay this message to all members of the Bar.”
Reddy further stated, “We also advised him to encourage young lawyers in the courtroom and refrain from making any irrelevant remarks during hearings.”
Another senior lawyer present during the session confirmed to the legal news portal that Justice Srishananda also addressed comments directed at a woman lawyer, who was seen in one of the videos being reprimanded by the judge. The judge Justice Srishananda clarified that his remarks were not intended to target her (woman lawyer) specifically, but rather pertained to the appellant she was representing. “He explained that his comment was meant to imply that the appellant seemed to know a lot about the other party,” said the lawyer.
In addition, Justice Srishananda assured those present that he would avoid making such comments in the future.
The controversy came to light on September 19, when a video clip from an August 28 Court hearing surfaced on social media, showing Justice Srishananda referring to a Muslim-majority sub-locality in Bengaluru’s Goripalya as "Pakistan." Hours later, another video from the same courtroom emerged, in which the judge was seen making a gender-insensitive remark.
Following outrage over the viral videos, a Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, along with Justices Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, Surya Kant, and Hrishikesh Roy, on September 20 took a suo motu cognizance and sought a report from the Karnataka High Court Registrar General in connection with the viral video.
