Govt orders audit of IT infrastructure after Legion group hacks multiple accounts

The Indian government has stepped in and is going to work on a war footing in the wake of hacking of Twitter and personal accounts of Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi, liquor baron Vijay Mallya, and senior journalists Barkha Dutt and Ravish Kumar by Legion group. They have also threatened to hack parliament’s website.

IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has called for an audit of entire IT infrastructure and ordered review of the financial sector starting immediately with the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI), review of the IT Act to make it stronger and setting up a crack team to respond to unusual incidents on a war footing.

The government has also asked Twitter and payment wallets to strengthen their network. NPCI is an umbrella organisation for all retail payments system in India.

"There is huge traffic flowing through the IT platforms, if there is any mishap, the systems have to be resilient and we have to take appropriate measures. We have to be alert, there is nothing to be scared of," said Prasad.

A meeting was also called of bankers and more than 50 officers from IDFC, ICICI, SBI, Canara Bank, etc attended it.

"We have sought details from all the people whose accounts have been hacked and Twitter has also been asked to strengthen its security and to pay attention to any unusual movement," Prasad told ET.