The Congress’s website was on Thursday taken down and hundreds of e-mail and Twitter accounts of its members, including those of several senior leaders, were disabled following a series of massive cyber attacks on the server that hosts the services.
The hackers have threatened to make public the e-mail contents by Christmas.
Based on complaints, the Delhi Police have registered two FIRs under Section 66 of the Information Technology Act and sought the service provider log records and IP addresses of the devices that were used to access the accounts.
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The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is also investigating the digital footprints of the hackers.
The cyber attacks have triggered a war of words between the Congress and the BJP leaders. The issue was also raised in Parliament by several members, raising concern about the cyber security preparedness of the country.
Alleging a conspiracy behind the hacking of its website and e-mail and Twitter accounts, the party, in its police complaint, said: “The profanity, abuse and derogatory remarks were then retweeted within seconds and minutes by various individuals carrying the same mal-intent in concert with the said hackers as part of a ring of conspiracy to publish, propagate and spread the highly abusive, obscene … as posted illegally.”
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“The e-mail accounts operating through domain inc.in and the Twitter accounts of a large number of party members have been suspended due to the cyber attacks,” said a Congress member, requesting anonymity.
It comes just a day after Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter account was hacked.
Party chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala blamed the “fascist” forces, stating that it reflected the extremities of an intolerant culture that resorted to abuse when cornered. Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel tweeted: “Those forcing country to adopt online payment overnight, have they taken steps to ensure a/c of ordinary ppl will be immune from hacking?”
(With Nisthula Hebbar and Shubhomoy Sikdar)