Key Indian websites hacked

‘DEranged security’ offers over 100 email acconts and passwords of government organisations across the world

How safe is cyber space in India? This is a question that is recurrent. In a recent devlopment, a hacker has taken on cyber security in India.

In Sweden, the hacker managed to hack into email inboxes of Indian embassies in US, China, Germany, Belgium and other countries. Further more, the hacker has also managed to get into the emails of the National Defence Academy & DRDO officials.

The hacker has posted email ids and passwords of 100 email accounts of embassies & government offices across the world, including 13 Indian establishments, on his website ‘DEranged security’.

It remains unclear how the passwords were accessed by the hacker. He has posted his name on the web as Dan Egerstam from Malmo in Sweden.

Logging on to the website allows users to access key emails of several Indian Embassies across the world. The mail-box of the administration officer of the National Defence Academy and a director of the Defence Research and Development Organistaion has also been hacked.

TIMES NOW was able to access several of these emails using data from the website.

Email account of NDA accessed by TIMES NOW, had details of purchases made by the NDA.

Ownwer of the website claims to be Dan Egerstad from Malmo in Sweden. The Swede said that he is not a hacker, and only wanted to test the security systems online. He has also said that he will cooperate if the Indian authorities contact him. Dan also told TIMESNOW that he was not hacking anything but accidentally stumbled onto the information. The act of publishing it however was to let the peopple know that the security was not enough. "I usually contact the people involved and tell them how to fix it, but in this case I didn’t think I could. I didn’t think the Indian government would listen," he added.

Egerstad also added that he had only been doing this a month, and although he refused to divulge the information as to how exactly the information was accessed, the swede said that it was very simple and easy to do and could be done at home within a few minutes.

However, precautionary measures are already in place in case of such instances. A body called NTRO - National Technical Reserach Organisation was established in 2005. NTRO is a premier body gathering technical intelligence for the government of India. It is responsible to ensure and suggest safeguards for government property on the world wide web. NTRO is also incharge of handling technical surveillance.