The website of NIMHANS is world-renowned as a centre for mental health, neurosciences and allied fields was inaccessible on Wednesday, as the server was down.
If you tried to access it you would have read — An error occurred during a connection to nimhans.ac.in. SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length.
A Google search of the institute’s website on Chrome read ‘This site has still been hacked, fix your s***t’. A Microsoft Bing search of NIMHANS however read ‘NIMHANS – National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences’, but the site was inaccessible nonetheless.
Officials at NIMHANS said it was a precautionary pulling down of the website after increased activity was noticed on Tuesday.
Dr Girish, faculty in charge of IT cell, NIMHANS, said that the message on Chrome was due to the cache system — for instance when the internet is down, the page already in the system will load.
He likened it to how miscreants deface a public wall just outside, as they cannot come inside.
Dr Girish said the institute was keeping a close watch after the Ransomware experience around this time the last year. “These are the times when we have the financial year end and exams and someone would try to do something. We downed the website when we noticed four suspicious activities. We have been aggressive this year. NIMHANS has got the best antivirus for servers.”
He said that hacking is an automated process, where the attackers keep checking for vulnerabilities, but the website was not hacked.
The only minor glitch in the recent past, he said, was on the last date of admission applications when many tried to access the server during the same hour, but that too was rectified.
The cyber police have been intimated on the suspicious activities, to keep a watch. As protocol, all logs get gathered for detailed forensic analysis, just like they did the last year to fix the patches.
Neither last year, nor this year, he said patient data, which is confidential, was compromised as the servers were different. “Just like walls of the forts, the systems were segments and the patient records, which are confidential, was in the innermost wall.”
The site is likely to be up on Thursday.
If you tried to access it you would have read — An error occurred during a connection to nimhans.ac.in. SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length.
A Google search of the institute’s website on Chrome read ‘This site has still been hacked, fix your s***t’. A Microsoft Bing search of NIMHANS however read ‘NIMHANS – National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences’, but the site was inaccessible nonetheless.
Officials at NIMHANS said it was a precautionary pulling down of the website after increased activity was noticed on Tuesday.
Dr Girish, faculty in charge of IT cell, NIMHANS, said that the message on Chrome was due to the cache system — for instance when the internet is down, the page already in the system will load.
He likened it to how miscreants deface a public wall just outside, as they cannot come inside.
Dr Girish said the institute was keeping a close watch after the Ransomware experience around this time the last year. “These are the times when we have the financial year end and exams and someone would try to do something. We downed the website when we noticed four suspicious activities. We have been aggressive this year. NIMHANS has got the best antivirus for servers.”
He said that hacking is an automated process, where the attackers keep checking for vulnerabilities, but the website was not hacked.
The only minor glitch in the recent past, he said, was on the last date of admission applications when many tried to access the server during the same hour, but that too was rectified.
The cyber police have been intimated on the suspicious activities, to keep a watch. As protocol, all logs get gathered for detailed forensic analysis, just like they did the last year to fix the patches.
Neither last year, nor this year, he said patient data, which is confidential, was compromised as the servers were different. “Just like walls of the forts, the systems were segments and the patient records, which are confidential, was in the innermost wall.”
The site is likely to be up on Thursday.
