PIL Filed In Bombay High Court Regarding Cyber Attacks On Official State Websites

A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been filed in the Bombay High Court concerning cyber-attacks impacting official websites of the State government and its departments.The petition filed by an Information Technology Consultant and Visiting Professor of Law seeks to direct State and Central Government authorities to prevent the contamination of several official Maharashtra State Government websites.The petitioner argues that due to inadequate security measures and a lack of monitoring of cyber infrastructure, parts of the government website have been compromised. The petitioner states that websites have been contaminated with software which causes unsuspecting visitors to be redirected to a gambling website, which attempts to collect the personal information of the visitor. The petitioner states that upon discovering infected pages, he called the Maharashtra Cyber Helpline number to report the incident. It is stated that the complaint was refused on the ground that they only take complaints related to personal injury and financial fraud. The petitioner states that even the National Cyber Crime Helpline refused to take up the complaint. It is stated that the petitioner had reported the matter to the Computer Emergency Response Team of India (CERT-In), but received no response.The petitioner contends that the official State government servers do not have adequate security measures like web application firewalls, anti-virus software, intrusion detection/prevention and anomaly detection software. The petition states that there is no due negligence on part of State authorities to address cyber attacks. It is stated that the Content Management System that runs the websites is outdated, which has led to cyber criminals exploiting the software on government servers and injecting malicious programming code. The petition further states that the contamination of government websites will lead to exploitation and misuse for offences like phishing attacks, digital arrest, fake e-challan payments, fake government resolutions and executive orders. The petitioner thus prays for directing the State authorities to take steps to block the infected websites and to take preventive measures to ensure that cyber attacks do not occur in the future. The petitioner further prays for the registration of FIRs against persons responsible for such attacks and to direct the police to investigate the matter. It is also prayed to direct the State authorities to expedite the establishment of a Cyber Task Force to deal with the security of government websites. The counsel for the petitioner mentioned the plea before the division bench of Chief Justice Alok Aradhe and Justice Bharati Dangre today. The Court said that it would take up the matter next week. Case title: Ruzbeh Dossabhoy Raja vs. State of Maharashtra & Ors.Counsels for Petitioner: Advocate Ajinkya Udane a/w advocate Jay Bhatia

PIL Filed In Bombay High Court Regarding Cyber Attacks On Official State Websites

Sanjana Dadmi

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