ALAPPUZHA: The website of the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) was hacked during the Onam days, totally disabling the online booking system.
However, the site has been restored and is now accessible to the users.
The hacker posted a promotional message for Viagra and even went on to alert the public against hacking.
The incident was brought to the notice of the KSRTC’s Electronic Data Processing (EDP) section by the KSRTC blog administrator.
The officials of the Kerala State Government’s IT Department told Express that the KSRTC had developed its website and the online ticket booking service system without taking adequate cyber security measures.
The website of the KSRTC was developed by Kran Consulting IT Consultancy and Software Solutions and the system integration was done by the Kerala State Electronic Development Corporation (KELTRON). Kran had created the KSRTC website using the software ‘Saarathi’.
However, sources told Express that the KSRTC had developed its site without proper assistance of KELTRON and Kran.
It was on December 12, 2008, that the KSRTC launched its website. Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan launched the online reservation system in November 2009.
N Gangadaran Pillai, senior programme officer, EDP section of the KSRTC, denied that the website had been hacked. “Our site had some technical problems.
The online reservation system was slow during the Onam days. We had informed the Google of the technical problems and they have promised to solve it soon,” Pillai said.
According to the IT officials, the 20-odd websites of the State Government, including those of the Citizen’s Call Centre (CCC) and Kerala University’s website for the Centre for Bio-Informatics (CBI), have been hacked so far.
The CBI website of Kerala University was hacked multiple times.
This might be because the hacker mistook it for the website of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the IT department officials said.
Though the State Government had constituted Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), Kerala, for protecting the government websites, its functioning had come to a standstill owing to the shortage of staff and as well as scientific facilities.