AIIMS Cyber Attack: Delhi Police has written a letter to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Through the letter, Delhi Police has sought information about Chinese hackers through Interpol in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) cyber attack case.
Cyber criminals hacked the digital services of AIIMS and allegedly compromised the data of a large number of patients. The hackers allegedly demanded an estimated amount of Rs 200 crore in cryptocurrency. The servers of the country’s premier institute were down for several days, affecting many hospital services.
Delhi Police sought this information in the letter
In a letter to the central agency, the Delhi Police has asked whether these IP addresses are being used by any company or individual. Along with this, information has also been sought about the company providing the internet in China.
In a statement, the Delhi Police said that, “the Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) of Delhi Police has written to CBI asking them to get details from Interpol about IP addresses of the email IDs from Henan in China and Hong Kong that were used to launch the cyber attack. Since CBI is the nodal agency,letter written to them.”
Manual services continue in AIIMS amid fear of cyber attack
All emergency and routine patient care and laboratory services at AIIMS continue to go manually amid cyber security scare. The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN), Delhi Police and representatives of the Ministry of Home Affairs worked tirelessly to resolve the issue.
According to media reports, internet services were also suspended in AIIMS as per the recommendations of the investigating agencies. The IFSO unit of Delhi Police had registered a case of extortion and cyber terrorism on November 25 in connection with the ransomware attack.
Government sources said it later emerged that the cyber attack on AIIMS Delhi’s servers was suspected to have originated from locations in China and Hong Kong. Officials claimed that out of 100 servers (40 physical and 60 virtual), five physical servers were successfully infiltrated by the hackers. According to sources, the loss would have been much more, but it was averted by timely intervention.
System failure first observed on 23 November
The system glitch was first reported on November 23 and two days later a case of extortion and cyber terrorism was registered by the Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) unit of the Delhi Police.
Every year around 38 lakh patients including top political leaders, bureaucrats and judges get treated at AIIMS. Top intelligence and counter-terrorism agencies besides IT emergency teams worked on the case as all the over 5,000 computers and servers were scanned.
