Is startupindia.gov Website of Indian Government, Infected?

Recently, a 21-year old entrepreneur and cybersecurity expert Surya Pratap Singh who is also the founder of Aezowie Infotech Services Private Limited analyzed the Indian government website startupindia.gov.in and found a critical security problem in that website which he wanted to explore more.

Before he began searching for the trademark registration process on that website, he suddenly realized that one of the website’s PDF files was infected by a virus; he found the existence of a Trojan virus in the Information page of the website.

According to the Surya Partap, to prove such kind of security flaw, he checked that PDF file against many anti-virus programs in my system and through VirusTotal and these showed that the file contained a Trojan virus (maybe the URL: MAL Trojan).

This type of virus is generally used to control and steal sensitive information from a user’s systems. Thus, the systems of many users who downloaded this file from the website were at risk.

From his point of view, that pdf file was uploaded to Startup India website without doing any security check or scanning. It may have been infected through a Heap Spraying technique or URL: MAL Trojan.

If this file had existed longer on the official Startup India website for downloading then it would be unsafe, it is also not good for Startup India website because very soon anti-viruses would blacklist that URL.

Surya has created a video of his findings and here it is…

However, the Indian government is very good at handling these type of issues and protecting peoples. Now they also need to make people aware of the cybersecurity.

Surya also got appreciation from Startup India & CERT-In (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team) for telling this issue & to fulfill his duty to serve the nation.

“Hello Mr. Surya Pratap, Appreciating your interest in Indian Cyberspace. We are in the process of dealing with this.”
– CERT-India

“Thank you for bringing a problem to our notice. We have forwarded this to the concerned department.”
– Startup India Team

 

Author of this article:  Surya Pratap Singh