The Facebook page of the Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate was hacked and the cover photograph, display picture and the name were changed, an officer in the commissionerate said.
“The name of the page was changed from Bidhannagar City Police to Bidhannagar City. No malicious content was posted on the page,” the officer said.
The cover photograph was replaced by an picture of a health camp organised by the Bidhannnagar commissionerate. The profile picture was replaced by a picture of the Tricolour. With the picture was the text “Let’s Salute the Nation”, followed by “Happy Independence Day” in the next line and “Sikdar Bagan Sadharon Durgotsov” in the third.
Senior officers in the commissionerate noticed the changes late on Saturday.
The officers got in touch with personnel entrusted with managing the page and realised that the changes were the result of a malware attack.
“As soon as we realised that this was the result of a malware attack, we got in touch with Facebook. They assured us that the page would be restored. The page was back to normal around 9.30am on Sunday,” the officer said.
The Facebook page of the commissionerate, which has around 95,000 followers, regularly puts out information about various outreach programmes of the commissionerate such as telemedicine session dates.
It also contains information on when one can meet senior officers at police stations and traffic guards and tips to combat cybercrime.
The commissionerate has started a suo-motu case for the malware attack. “This was a virus attack. We are trying to track down those who were behind it,” an officer said.
Another officer of the commissionerate said they were trying to track down the IP address of the computer from where the malware attack had been launched. An IP address is like a fingerprint of an internet-connected device.