KATHMANDU, JANUARY 28
Hundreds of government websites under the '.gov.np' domain, including the Office of the Prime Minister, the President's Office, and websites of all departments were hacked by people from unidentified places that obstructed accessibility to the websites from 12:00 noon to 4:00pm today.
The websites showed various server failure messages after being rendered inaccessible. Authorities said it was a deliberate attack on websites that held the government's most vital information.
However, National Information Technology Centre, the major government body that protects the government domain claimed the attack did not intend to steal any information or inject any malaware but just to disrupt website accessibility.
Ramesh Prasad Pokharel, assistant director of NITC said it was a 'Distributed Denial of Service' known as D-DoS. A malicious attempt to disrupt normal traffic of a targeted server by creating artificial traffic or internet users. A flood of fake internet users try to enter, and the domain misunderstands it as genuine traffic. This ultimately leads to a crash. "The Internet Protocol addresses of such traffic changed within seconds as a flood of artificial users infiltrated our server which eventually crashed our service," Pokharel. He added that hacker could be one or multiple people operating within the country or from abroad. "We are working on it and will find the real location of hackers soon," Pokharel added.
NITC also has a device for defending against such attacks, but it happened on Saturday the weekend holiday, when traffic is least expected. NITC also can monitor the system 24/7. However, it clearly seems incompetent to handle such an attack.
This is not the first attack on Nepal government's domain. The NITC said it faced similar attack six months ago, which hindered the website for hours. People inside the country or abroad can engage in such kinds of attack on the government's website with basic tools and knowledge of the internet.
Pokharel said this kind of attack has become a nuisance even for developed countries as large investments have to be made to tackle the issue.
A version of this article appears in the print on January 29, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
