Five AIIMS servers hacked, 1.3TB data encrypted in cyber attack: Govt to Parliament

A day after government sources linked the recent AIIMS cyberattack to Chinese hackers, the Centre on Friday told Parliament that nearly 1.3 Terabytes (TB) of data was encrypted in the recent attack and a cyber crisis management plan was put in place to prevent public institutions from being targeted.

A government analysis has traced the source of the cyberattack to Chinese hackers. Five of the 100 servers had been infiltrated by hackers and data from the compromised servers has been successfully retrieved.

The IT ministry told Parliament that the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In) has evaluated the incident, and as per the preliminary analysis, servers were compromised in the IT network of AIIMS due to "improper network segmentation", which caused operational disruption due to non-functionality of critical applications. "Based on current analysis by concerned stakeholders, 5 servers of AIIMS were affected and approximately 1.3 Terabytes of data was encrypted," the government said in response to a question by CPI(M) MP John Brittas.


A cyber crisis management plan for countering cyberattacks and cyberterrorism has been formulated by CERT-In for implementation by all ministries and departments of the central and state governments, as well as their organisations and critical sectors, the ministry said in its response. A special advisory on security practices has been sent by CERT-In to the ministry of health for sensitising health sector entities on the latest cybersecurity threats, it added. In its response to Parliament on the same issue, the health ministry said five physical servers of AIIMS, New Delhi on which the e-Hospital application of NIC was hosted, were affected.