Singapore- Government System Hacked, Information Stolen By Bad Actors
The Defence Ministry of Singapore hit by a cyber-attack. The personal information of more than 800 employees and Singapore National Servicemen, has been stolen by the hackers. The news has been confirmed by Singapore Defence Ministry on Tuesday. The stolen information contains contact numbers, national ID numbers, and dates of birth. According to the Defence Ministry, the hackers were trying to find official secrets.
How The Hackers Managed To Breach The Data?
The Singapore Defence Ministry is using “I-net System”, which provide internet access to Government employees and all the national servicemen for personal communication. This “I-net System” has been exploited by the hackers to steal personal information of Singaporean employees. The Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) Singapore and SAF (Singapore Armed Forces), both are accessing this “I-net System”.
What About The Government Secrets?
Both SAF and MINDEF are using separate systems to store government secrets. These systems are not connected to the internet and have been guarded by security experts. These systems are not connected with exploited “I-net System”, so we can say that all the Government secrets of Singapore Defence Ministry are safe. The Cyber Security Agency of Singapore is investigating this incident. The ministry said, it was a well-planned cyber attack and the main motive of hackers behind this cyber attack was to steal government secrets. Luckily, all the secret operations of government are safe.
The Singapore government has implemented various security methods in the middle of 2015 to protect its systems from various type of malware attacks. For that, the government separated all the internet surfing systems of civil servants from those systems which are connected with connected with sensitive servers. All the ministers, government employees, and civil servicemen are using separate systems to surf internet and to communication with each other.
The Defence Systems Are Privileged Target of Hackers
Hackers are targeting government systems and defence infrastructure to seek the attention of media. But this type of cyber attacks could be really dangerous for a nation, because all the national secrets may go into wrong hands. The bad actors are developing hard coded malware and Trojans to infect government and private organizations of some particular countries. The “Latent Bot” backdoor is one of its examples which was spying on Singaporean companies in December 2015. This backdoor was detected by security Firm “Fire Eye”.
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