Ahmedabad Cyber Cell Finds Bugs in 50 Govt Sites, Forms Technical Cell To Combat In Virtual World

AHMEDABAD: The Gujarat Police’s Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Cell has submitted a report to the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) — India’s premier technical intelligence agency under the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) — stating that up to 50 government websites are infected with bugs and require immediate attention from cyber experts.

A “bug” is a flaw or problem in a computer programme that causes it to crash unexpectedly or produce unwanted results or errors while running.

It has been learned that the report was compiled by a “technical cell” within the Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Cell after months of scouring hundreds of state and union government websites.

According to Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Cell officials, a detailed report on these websites was recently forwarded to The National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC), a body established under the Information Technology (Amendment) Act that functions as a unit of NTRO reporting directly to the PMO.

Amit Vasava, deputy commissioner of police in charge of the Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Cell, stated that the technical cell team he leads has begun working on government websites as part of their ongoing “ethical hacking” learning module. Vasava, an IPS officer from the 2016 batch with a background in computer engineering, claims to have hand-picked the technical cell.

“The technical cell consists of one inspector, one sub-inspector, and nine lok rakshak dal jawans (six men and three women) from various Ahmedabad police stations who have completed computer engineering. We discovered a few hackers who were causing digital data loss, and we decided it was time for the technical team to receive ethical hacking training. We hired the Mumbai-based private agency Pristine Info Solutions and have been attending classes every morning for the past two months. During our training, we focused on government websites and discovered flaws,” Vasava added.

Seven interns have also been hired by the Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Cell to work on specific projects. “We received over 700 applications in response to our advertisement for interns. After three rounds of interviews, a panel of experts from National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU), Raksha Shakti University (RSU), and Gujarat Technical University chose seven of them (GTU). Our interns are currently working on projects involving internet usage data and the dark web. We recently hosted our website on a deep web domain to better understand how it works,” Vasava explained.

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