Delhi Police have launched an investigation into the hacking of Twitter handles of Congress and its vice-president Rahul Gandhi. The cyber cell of economic offences wing of Delhi police registered two separate FIRs under Section 66 of the IT law.
Initial reports from the probe reveals that the server from where the hackers had logged in was based in Bengaluru, However, the IP address they used was found to be in Norway or Sweden, Times of India reported quoting its sources.
Police suspect that the hackers used "spear phishing", where the email account used to create the Twitter handle or the Twitter account itself is hacked using phishing software, the daily reported.
They also suspect Rahul's account might have been accessed from a device that did not have an updated anti-virus software or from a compromised IP address. They said that the hackers might have logged in from multiple IP addresses to make tracking difficult.
A cyber security team under DCP Anyesh Roy was formed to probe into the full dump of the INC mail id. A request was sent to Twitter to access the related information that the hackers had used to create their Twitter profile.
Though the Twitter handles of the Congress and Gandhi were restored, the party’s website continued to be down till late Thursday night. The website was compromised earlier on December 9, 2011.
The back-to-back incidents in a little over 12 hours put to question the country’s online security system at a time when the government is promoting digitisation in a mass scale, including in governance and electronic payment for goods and services.
