Hacking attempt leads to shut down of Islamabad Safe City online system

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad Safe City Authority’s online system was knocked down following a hacking attempt leading to its shut down, police officers privy to the development told a local publication on Saturday.

Police officials said the hackers attacked the system two days ago and since then it has been shut down.

Police spokesman Taqi Jawad confirmed the attack by the hackers on the Safe City Authority adding that it was an attempt and the firewall issued an alert after which all logins to the servers were closed as a precautionary measure.

“All the logins were closed for the last two days to change them, including the login of the police stations, police officers, including ASPs/DSPs, SPs, SSPs and DIGs,” the PRO said.

The hackers entered the main server of the system on Thursday and then the server had data and records of criminals, they said. Some servers, including that of the Complaint Management System, Criminal Management Record System, Human Resources Management System, and the ones operating software and applications for the Operation Division were shut down immediately.

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Furthermore, it was learned that the firewall of the system issues an alert in case of any trespassing into any server. There was no alternate arrangement or any backup server to make the software and applications operational, so they were shut down.

Later, the IT department of the authority closed all the logins to the software and applications, the officers said. Through the login, officials get access to different servers and make the software and applications operational.

The authority’s IT department closes logins to software and applications.

Mobile applications, records of smart police vehicles, police stations, video analectic, Islamabad Traffic Police, e-challan, records of the operations division and data on criminals and 13 to 15 servers provided by police facilitation center F-6 are linked with the servers of the authority.

The Safe City cameras management system has independent direct lines that are offline. It is impossible to penetrate the system or hack it until the hacker or trespasser has an ID or password used by the officials.