Man who worshipped Godse joins Cong; ‘now Gandhian’, says party
BHOPAL: The induction of a former municipal corporator who built a temple dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse into the Congress has stirred a political controversy in Madhya Pradesh.
The Congress on Thursday inducted Babulal Chaurasiya into the party in the presence of former chief minister Kamal Nath. Hitting out at the Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party leader and state home minister Narottam Mishra said: “This has
revealed the double standards of the Congress party. Congress party leaders use the name of Father of Nation Mahatma Gandhi for votes only like they use the name of BR Ambedkar and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel during elections only.”
Defending the party’s decision, Congress’s Gwalior MLA Praveen Pathak said, “Chaurasiya decided to return to the party. We welcomed him because our party leaders are like Rahul Gandhi, who has even forgiven the murderer of his father to give them a chance...”
Chaurasiya was with the Hindu Mahasabha when he built the temple dedicated to Godse in 2017. The Hindu Mahasabha on Thursday said Chaurasiya was expelled three days ago.
The Centre told the Delhi high court on Thursday that a marriage in India can be recognised only if it is between a “biological man” and a “biological woman” capable of producing children, strongly opposing the validation of same-sex marital unions.
The government said any interference by a court in the marital statute based on personal laws will create “havoc” in society and will run afoul of the intent of the Parliament in framing the laws. It said a fundamental right cannot be an “untrammelled right” and cannot override other constitutional principles.
In an affidavit filed before a bench comprising justices Rajiv Sahai Endlaw and justice Amit
Bansal, the government opposed pleas seeking legalisation of same-sex marriages and said the laws mandate that “marriage is a bond between a biological man and a biological woman”.
The institution of marriage has a sanctity attached to it and in major parts of the country it is regarded as a “sacrament,” the government argued.
NEW DELHI: A new phishing email using compromised government accounts targeted groups of officials this week, attempting to lure them into sharing their passwords on a page that mirrored the government’s official mail server sign-on website, an attack that could let the attackers gain access to sensitive credentials and files.
The attack, which took place on Monday, prompted the government’s IT departments to send out an alert the following day to large groups of officials, according to emails seen by HT. The incident is the latest in a series of such cyber attacks that leverage compromised @gov.in or @nic.in email addresses issued by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), which may be more successful in luring the targets into sharing sensitive information.
“There has been another phishing attempt using the same MO [modus operandi] but this time it also provided the link to a fake email log-in page. Many officials fell for it as it mirrored the same log-in page and clicked on the link in the phishing email and tried logging in to their government email accounts. The link to that page is still live. Several ministries and departments were alerted about the phishing attack on Tuesday,” an official said, asking not to be named.
An alert issued by one of the IT departments of the government said that phishing attack “...entices email users to authorize email ID for kavach by clicking on a web-link... When email user clicks on the weblink to verify his/her email ID, a login page similar to www.email.gov.in opens. This is to inform that the login page is malicious/phishing in nature”.
Altogether, HT is aware of five NIC domain addresses – four with @gov.in suffixes and the fifth an @nic.in one – that have been used to launch cyber attacks. HT is not disclosing these addresses in order to protect any investigations there may be.
“It is being observed that you did not AUTH your account til deadline of KAVACH, its intimated to you that please AUTH your account now otherwise your account will be locked permanently,” the latest phishing mail said.
In response to queries from HT on these attacks, an NIC official said: “In phishing attacks End User awareness is a very critical component and NIC is focusing on this through routine advisories and workshops. In addition to this, based on the evolving threat landscape, security posture of the Government email setup and networks are continuously reviewed and steps are taken to mitigate emerging cyber-attacks.”
The NIC, on February 19, had said phishing attempts are among common email-based threat vectors to target users of any email service. Such phishing attacks intend to harvest user details/credentials.
According to cybersecurity experts, the address mentioned in the latest phishing email is a redirection page. “The attack is phishing with the intent of credential harvesting. Once these credentials are stolen, more such attacks will continue from these stolen identities. There is no malware in the link but redirection, which is bad and not transparent,” said a security researcher at Sequretek, a cybersecurity firm. This person requested not to be identified.
The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-in), which investigates incidents of cyber breaches, did not respond to requests for a comment.
On February 21, HT also reported that the devices of multiple former defence personnel may have been compromised in a phishing attack launched through similar attacks carried out by government domain email addresses.