The Centre on Sunday dismissed media reports that the data breaches in organisations like Air India, Big Basket and Domino’s have exposed email accounts and passwords of NIC emails to hackers.
“There has been no cyber breach into the email system of the Government of India maintained by the National Informatics Centre (NIC). The email system is totally safe and secure,” the Ministry of Electronics and IT said in a statement.
The ministry further said that the cyber security breach on external portals may not impact the users of government email service, unless the government users have registered on these portals using their government email address and have used the same password as the one used in the government email account.
“NIC Email system has put in place several security measures such as two factor authentication and change of password in 90 days. Further, any change of password in NIC Email requires mobile OTP and if the mobile OTP is incorrect then change of password will not be possible,” it said.
On Saturday, a national daily reported that emails and passwords of hundreds of Union government officials have been exposed to hackers due to the recent data breaches of Air India, Domino’s and Big Basket.
The daily cited an internal communication which had said that the compromised emails on government domains such as @nic.in and @gov.in are potential cyber threats as they are being used by “adversaries” to send malicious mails to all government users.
