Porn surfing a cyber risk, babus told

New Delhi: Frequent surfing of pornographic websites by some government officials, emails containing fake lottery amounts and some spyware are the major reasons for the hacking of computers of India’s key ministries and departments by internet impostors, most of them from China and Pakistan.

Despite repeated warnings by the Ministry of Home Affairs, officials of many vital wings of the government keep surfing pornographic sites during office hours in office computers, resulting in penetration of spyware from foreign hackers, officials said.

Opening of emails containing fake lottery amounts are another key reason why the government computers are repeatedly hacked by the impostors.

The Home Ministry, many a time, have asked all ministries and departments not to keep any file of strategic importance in internet-connected computers but store them in stand-alone ones.

“The advice is repeatedly violated,” a Home Ministry official said.

There have been reports that hackers based in abroad recently have penetrated into the computers of the Ministry of Defence and took away many information related to India’s strategic details.

-PTI