Prime Minister’s email remained hacked for 3 months in 2008
23 March, 2009
According to reports, the official email system of the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh remained hacked for nearly three months, between February and April 2008. The PMO (Prime Minister’s Office) has reportedly said that many emails sent to the office during the period never reached the inbox. The error was noticed only in April 2008.
The matter came to light when the Central Information Commission (CIC) was hearing a complaint filed by retired Air Commodore Lokesh Batra against the PMO regarding the discrepancies in the Hindi edition of the RTI (Right to Information) Act. During the hearing, the PMO submitted that “there was a virus problem during the months of February, March, April that was finally detected only late in April”.
It is also reported that the technical fault overshadowed the PMO email communication system in the Microsoft Outlook Express for three months. On detecting the problem, the Microsoft Outlook Express email software was replaced by an Open Source Software -- SquirrelMail. [Source: Express Buzz]
So the prime minister office is using hosting service of Rs. 800 a year or likes. squirrel mail is only available in that kind of servers. and by the way do you think squirrel mail is good enough for the most important office of the nation. WHO IS THE TECHNICAL CONSULTANT OF PMO/// HE SHOULD BE GIVEN AN AWARD FOR HIS COMPETENCY.
How did the virus get in? Did their AV and firewall not work or did it come through Outlook Express?
Three months, that's amazing. I bet the IT department is in big trouble over there. Did the AV software not work at the time or what?
Just asking out of curiosity, can this be done with our gmail, yahoo acount as well?
I think my gmail is hacked in a similar way, I haven't received many emails which I was told I was mailed
Please let me know.
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