A hacker got into the ticketing system of the Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (UPSRTC), officials said on Thursday.
Demand
UPSRTC further mentioned that the perpetrators have demanded money to restore the system.
“Hacker encrypted the data of the passengers and demanded a ransom of Rs 40 crores in bitcoins in Indian currency valuation for returning this data to the Transport Department.
The hacker also threatened to double the amount if the money is not received in two days,” the official said.
Online bookings affected
The UPSRTC website was hacked at around 2 am on Wednesday by some foreign hackers, leading to online bookings through the state run bus service coming to a standstill.
UPSRTC General Manager (IT) Yajuvendra Singh said that a case has been registered under the IT Act for damaging online data.
Orion Pro Company is responsible for the online ticketing system of the Transport Corporation.
Third party firm deploys own experts
It has deployed a team of experts to recover the website data while also seeking a week’s time to set up new servers and restore online bookings.
It also filed a police case in Navi Mumbai and a separate case has been filed at the Gomti Nagar police station.
The UP government has ordered a third-party security audit for all the applications and web portals managed by M/s Orion Pro.
Back to manual operations
Restoration work is underway and UPSRTC plans to restore the online ticketing system in all 20 areas and 115 depots of the company over the course of next 7-10 days.
It is likely to take around 10 days to start online bookings again.
Meanwhile, the transport corporation’s buses are being operated through manual ticketing, so that the operation of the buses is not affected.
Regional officers have been asked to monitor bus stands and depots for 24 hours.
