The Indian Council of Medical Research has disclosed that it was recently subjected to a cyberattack.

A news report by ANI cited unnamed officials who claimed that hackers tried to break through the website of India’s peak body for biomedical research 6,000 times on 30 November.

These attempts, however, have been blocked by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), which hosts ICMR’s website. The NIC was also able to trace the hackers’ IP back to a blacklisted IP in Hong Kong, the report noted.

WHY IT MATTERS

According to sources, the ICMR was able to fend off such a massive cyberattack as its website is protected by NIC’s firewall and other security measures. The website, which also hosts web and data portals for its various programmes, is also protected by a customised pfSense open-soure firewall. Moreover, the internet traffic on the website is strictly controlled and regularly monitored for any suspicious activity. 

THE LARGER TREND

This hacking case adds to the growing number of recorded cyberattacks against the Indian healthcare industry, which currently stood at 1.9 million this year alone, according to recent research by local cybersecurity think tank CyberPeace Foundation.

Aside from the ICMR, two New Delhi-based hospitals, AIIMS Delhi and Safdarjung Hospital, also reported IT breaches last month. The former had already restored its compromised data while no data was stolen from the latter amid the hacking. 

Meanwhile, CloudSEK recently found that sensitive information of about 150,000 patients of Sree Saran Medical Centre in Tamil Nadu is being sold on the dark web. The hospital, however, denied any recent unauthorised access to its patients’ records.