The property tax website of the AMC shows somebody else as the owner of your property Ahmedabad: It’s that crucial year in the city’s history as civic body elections would be held online for the first time. Most of us who have not bothered to venture out to vote in these ‘unpopular elections’ would be able to do so through a website. But did you know that AMC’s cyber security backbone is in a shambles. With a simple username: ‘0’ and the password ‘0’, an ethical hacker proved the vulnerable nature of the website.

Interestingly, last year AMC’s website had won the best e-governance system in the country. And if there are allegations that the online civic elections are rigged, you shouldn’t have many doubts.

With a weak network security, the website http:// www.egovamc.com. has several chinks in its armour and is a ready invitation for hackers. The issue has been brought to notice of senior AMC officials and only recently they effected a few cosmetic security patch-ups for their website.

“We have reported the bugs in the website and problems with database management system and coding. We had earlier told the systems department of the AMC about a system that can be exploited with username and password as simple ‘0’. The vulnerability has been fixed by now but there are bigger challenges,” said Sunny Vaghela, a city-based cyber crime expert.

He said that if the website is vulnerable , it means that the hacker can get access to the control panel of the site, look into the contents such as tendering details, property tax details , building plans and allocation of funds, access to which is restricted to only senior-level civic officials.

The recent reports of Chinese invasion on Indian cyberspace is proof enough that any Indian website is not impenetrable. “It does not mean that we should not secure our sites. When we look for the contents and designing of the site, we do not give proper attention to its security. With growing user base of internet and government sites, one should pay attention to securing it,” said Vaghela.

Gujarat sites hacked
panchmahaldp.gujarat.gov.in newsletter.gujarat.gov.in bisag.gujarat.gov.in btm.gujarat.gov.in cmo.gujarat.gov.in gwrdc.gujarat.gov.in legalmetrology.gujarat.gov.in spipa.gujarat.gov.in vcs.gujarat.gov.in gujarat.gov.in

Civic body to buy 1,700 EVMs
With civic elections around the corner, Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has proposed to buy 1,700 new electronic voting machines (EVM) at a cost of Rs 1.88 crore. At present, the civic body has more than 3,000 EVM machines. On the EVMs , a senior AMC official said, “There will be 4,500 polling booth in the city for 64 municipal wards. Also, 10 per cent of EVMs will be used for training the officials involved in the election process.” The civic elections are due in month of October, 2010. TNN

50 govt sites defaced in just 3 months
About 1,500 websites with the domain .gov.in, .co.in, .in, .org were hacked in first three months of the current year. Of this, 14 websites of Gujarat with domain name ‘.gov.in’ were hacked. The state’s cyber backbone, Gujarat State Wide Area Network (GSWAN), too has the .gov.in domain name. AMC website might be a recent addition to a long list of sites with vulnerability but there are other such sites in the state as well. A report by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, known as CERT-In , has mentioned that of the 1,500-odd websites, 50 that were attacked between January and March belonged to prominent government sites with gov.in. It is notable that the entire 2009 figures stood at 92 such attacks. “Defacing the site means removing the original content and change it with a message or a signature of the hacker who did it. Government websites are favourite for defacement world over as they get the maximum hits and also the maximum publicity.

It is a race between hackers of various nations who attack each other on the cyber space,” said Abhilash Sonavane, vice-president (product management) of city-based cyber security company and member of Data Security Council of India’s Ahmedabad chapter.