Kathmandu, April 8

Hackers managed to access the database of Vianet and steal the details of more than 160,000 current and former users today.

Binay Bohra, managing director of Vianet, confirmed the hack and said that users’ information, including user names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail IDs have been exposed.

“We have informed the Central Investigation Bureau of Nepal Police about the incident and will know more after further investigation,” he said.

According to Nepal Telecommunications Authority, Vianet had 92,494 active users as of mid-December. Popular for providing comparatively cheaper internet packages, it is among the top three internet service providers in the country.

Assuring that the Vianet users would not face any service disruption, Bohra said the company is trying to retrieve the stolen data, but had begun to inform the users whose details have been exposed in the breach.

Nepal Police said they have been notified about the hack at Vianet and are investigating the matter along with an earlier cyber attack on Foodmandu.

This is a second major data breach in the course of one month.

On March 7, Foodmandu — an online company that delivers food from the restaurants listed on the site — was hacked.

Back then, data of 50,000 Foodmandu users had been compromised. The company subsequently issued a statement claiming a loophole that made the breach possible was immediately plugged.

A version of this article appears in e-paper on April 09, 2020 of The Himalayan Times.