On Friday, Goa police registered an FIR against an unknown person after the flood monitoring system of the water resource department (WRD) witnessed a ransomware cyber-attack and hackers demanded bitcoin to decrypt the data.
PI Rahul Parab said they had asked the Hyderabad-based software developer ASTRA Microwave Products Ltd representatives to join the investigation to trace the accused.
Sunil Karmarkar who is a WRD executive engineer said that the attack occurred on June 21 between 12 am and 2 am.
He also said that the integrity of the data has been changed, making it impossible to back up the previous data. The server works on a 24×7 internet line and the attack was possible due to the absence of antivirus and outdated firewalls.
The WRD consists of a flood monitoring system at 15 locations on major rivers in Goa to monitor water levels in rivers as a part of disaster management. It is done to have control over the flood eventualities.
Karmarkar said that the data of the flood monitoring system, and automated rain and weather gauges are stored in the server located at the data centre at Porvorim.
“The server has been under cyber attack of ransomware. Under the attack, all the files are encrypted with an eking extension and cannot be accessed. In a popup and stored file, the attackers are demanding bitcoin cryptocurrency for the decryption of the data,” said Karmarkar according to TOI.
