At least 3,000 email IDs of officials belonging to government organisations such as Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Ministry of Corporate affairs, Ministry of External Affairs, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) and Securities and Exchanges Board of India (SEBI), have been compromised, with their passwords available in plain text across various leaked databases on the dark web, The Quint reported. The officials who seem to have their “gov.in” extension email IDs compromised include former and current ambassadors, and serving and retired scientists from ISRO, the report said.
Majority of email IDs belonged to officials from atomic research institutions: Sai Krishna Koothrapalli, founder of Hackrew, who discovered the leaked emails, in a blog post said, that he found a total of 3,202 email IDs with the extension gov.in. Of these, 365 IDs belonged to officials from the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, 325 belonged to officials from BARC, and 157 belonged to officials from SEBI. He also wrote that the top 2 organisations whose employees emails IDs and passwords were hacked and are available on the deep web belonged to atomic research. “I am ruling out coincidence because you can’t have two organisations which deal with Atomic research on the top by sheer chance,” he added.
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https://www.medianama.com/2020/01/223-breached-government-email-ids-isro-mea-sebi/