Cybercrime , Fraud Management & Cybercrime , Geo Focus: Asia

Cyberattack Cripples Uttarakhand Government's IT Services

A cyberattack shut down government web portals, servers and a regional data center in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, forcing agencies to scramble to restore the affected services.

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The attack on Wednesday took down as many as 186 state government websites, including the official police website and the website of the Information Technology Development Agency, which monitors and manages IT performance and cybersecurity for the provincial government's information and communications infrastructure.

The attack also disrupted the Uttarakhand State Wide Area Network, or UKSWAN, which provides the communications infrastructure for government ministries, departments and local government offices across the state and supports electronic transfers of sensitive data and payments.

The attack was the worst cyber incident targeting India's critical information infrastructure since the November 2022 cyberattack on the New Delhi-based All India Institute of Medical Sciences that disrupted healthcare services and forced officials to rely on manual processes for several days (see: Server Remains Down; India's Premier Healthcare Uses Paper).

Disruptions to UKSWAN affected essential online services for citizens and businesses, and citizen-facing web portals including the land records portal, the chief minister's helpline, the vehicles registration portal and the state secretariat remained non-functional, said Nitika Khandelwal, director of ITDA.

The cyberattack also took down the Dehradun-based Uttarakhand State Data Center that serves as an online data repository for all government departments and local offices. According to ITDA, the data center has a capacity of more than 1,500 terabytes of cloud storage and a memory exceeding 350 terabytes, serving nearly 94 state government departments.

Khandelwal said disruptions to UKSWAN and the State Data Center forced officials to shut down essential online services and initiate restoration efforts. She said officials are yet to determine how the attack occurred or the nature of it but expressed confidence that the affected websites will be restored by Friday evening.