On Wednesday 3rd August, Pakistan’s major internet service provider Storm Fiber got attacked by Indian hackers, who found their way into the ISP’s website through a WordPress vulnerability.
Soon after the hack, Storm Fiber’s website displayed an Indian flag with a patriotic message for the Indian armed forces and its soldiers. The message also included a somewhat intimidating line which said that Indian hackers are tired of sniffing through Pakistan’s defence data.
The news came through Twitter and various other social platforms where people were found posting screenshots of Storm Fiber’s website. ‘Ne0Sec’, the Indian hacking group behind this attack also published the news on their Twitter account, while also tagging the government of Pakistan in their tweet.
Cybernet, Storm Fiber’s parent company when asked about the incident said that the hack is nothing more than a home page changing and no data losses have occurred. CEO Danish Lakhani while talking about the incident said that they have a strong data back-up system throughout major cities of Pakistan, while also assuring zero data breaches. “We have several backups in different cities. We don’t store (bank) card numbers. No breach, just the home page changed by the hackers”.
Talking about the security measures that Storm Fiber’s website has, Lakhani said that the ISP company does not save sensitive user information such as card numbers to avoid data theft at all costs. “That’s why every time one has to re-enter card numbers when making payment. This is a pain but to prevent data theft in situations such as above, we don’t store information”, he added.
In efforts to avoid any such problems in the future, Strom Fiber is already prepared with its plans to increase data security, CEO Lakhani while talking about them said that they would use Tokens in the near future, since they mask credit card numbers and protect users against data thefts.
The company has also started working on a newer and safer website that will be deployed in a months time, “They’ll (Storm Fiber officials) get it up soon after sanitizing it,” said Lakhani.
