Dubai, April 08: The Indian Consulate in Dubai, on Wednesday said it would tighten cyber security measures in the wake of a report that it was one of the Indian government bodies targeted by Chinese hackers who stole sensitive information.
Though the consulate is not sure if its computer network has been compromised, as revealed in the report by a Canadian research group, Consul General Sanjay Verma said the report “was an occasion to tighten ongoing exercises” to ensure safety of information and data.
Responding to the report, Verma said, “Whether true or not, such reports remind us to tighten our vigil and comply with the dos and don’ts.”
“We have our own mechanisms and precautions to prevent such incidents… (now) we will have to introduce more effective precautions and firewalls,” he told Khaleej Times.
“We don’t want any entity not intended to be the receiver of the privileged information and data to be getting them,” Verma said.
He added that the Indian government’s guidelines already prohibited its staff accessing social networking sites, which are cited as some of the tools used by the hackers to access some computers.
The ‘Shadows in the Cloud’ report by researchers from the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto revealed details of a cyber espionage attack on Indian national security information from various bodies.
These include the country’s defence and diplomatic bodies.
Among the four diplomatic missions reportedly hit by the hackers is the Indian Consulate in Dubai, which processes the highest number of passport and visa applications worldwide.
The report said documents recovered from the diplomatic missions contained “confidential information taken from Indian embassies regarding India’s international relations with and assessments of activities in West Africa, Russia/Commonwealth of Independent States and the Middle East, as well as visa applications, passport office circulars and diplomatic correspondence.”
“During the period in which we monitored the attackers, 99 documents, including what appears to be one encrypted diplomatic correspondence as well as five documents marked “RESTRICTED” and four documents marked “CONFIDENTIAL,” were exfiltrated,” said the report.
“In addition to documents containing personal, financial, and travel information on embassy and diplomatic staff, the exfiltrated documents included numerous visa applications, passport office circulars, and country assessments and reports. Confidential visa applications from citizens of Afghanistan, Australia, Canada, the People’s Republic of China, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Philippines, Senegal, Switzerland, Uganda, and the United Kingdom were among the exfiltrated documents,” it added.
–Agencies