Net loss for Noida police

Hosted on a US server, their official website can easily be hacked and accessed by foreign nationals

Hosted on a US server, their official website can easily be hacked and accessed by foreign nationals

That the US pokes its nose in other's affairs has often been argued. But in this case, it won't even have to contend with international treaties and cumbersome diplomatic procedures. All Washington needs to do is click on the mouse.



Every single detail that the Noida police puts up on its website can be accessed by Americans as their official website is hosted on a US server, in contravention to Indian law that makes it mandatory for all government websites to be hosted on an Indian server, preferably .in, .nic.in or .gov.

But what makes the proposition even more threatening is that the Noida police are clueless about the issue. Leave alone the server, the satellite town's police force doesn't have an IT expert who could have explained the situation to MiD DAY.

Apart from hackers, anybody could log in and remove official data, including history sheets of wanted criminals, amend data regarding arms licenses and play with details of visa verification.
Though Noida Senior Superintendent of Police AK Singh could not be reached for a comment despite repeated attempts, spokesperson for the force Manish Sharma said, "There is no one at the moment who can give you details about our website. Earlier, there was a lady who was handling the site but she got transferred, so there is no one who could talk to you about this."

https://www.noidapolice.com/ is hosted on a server based in Michigan with IP Address 67.225.203.16 registered in the name of Ducat India, a Noida-based company which was created on October 25, 2005. As the site is

WEB RAJ

Guddu Pandit, the BSP MLA from Debai who was arrested on July 2008, was once feared by the police. Such was his clout that his history sheet was destroyed from the police records, including the official webpage of Noida police. Noida police website has history sheets of all the criminals. But Pandit got it deleted from the website.

hosted on a server in America, it leaves all data and traffic coming to the site at the mercy of US authorities.

According to cyber experts, most of the police websites in India have been transferred to Indian servers, post 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks and maintain strict security of the uploaded data.

Himanshu Tiwari, a Gurgaon-based cyber crime expert, said, "A lot of information is uploaded on government websites and a huge database is maintained. The host server leaves information about arms licenses, visa verification, important phone numbers and crime database open to fraud."

"After the 9/11 attacks the US government started 'Carnivore' which was implemented by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The system was designed to monitor e-mail and electronic communication across the world. In a way, the Noida police have provided their data and traffic details to the US government on a platter," Tiwari said.

The cyber crime expert pointed out that if the website is hacked, all that the Noida cops could do is to just sit

The Other Side

There is no one at the moment who can give you details about our website. Earlier, there was a lady who was handling the site but she got transferred, so there is no one who could talk to you. - Noida police spokesperson

and read the log.u00a0

Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) India director Gulshan Rai confirmed that it was against the law, if a government website uses a foreign host server.

"Foreign servers are out of our jurisdiction. So, if such a website is attacked we cannot do anything," said a senior CERT official.