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The preliminary investigation into the cyberattack on some of the servers at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi has found that the hack originated from another country, and could possibly have involved “a foreign state actor”.
The cyber incident that took place last month had brought the online management system of the institute to a halt, and raised concerns over the data of crores of patients being compromised, including that of high-profile political personalities.
The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In), the country’s premier cybersecurity agency, is learnt to have concluded its initial investigation into the cyberattack, including the diagnosis of the hack and a preliminary identification of the actors involved in it.
Investigators are also learnt to have found that AIIMS was using the services of a private company to design and run its servers, which is expected to trigger a policy change by the Centre that could lead to all bodies affiliated to the Government facing periodic safety audits.
The origin of the cyberattack is from outside of India, and the initial investigation by Cert-In points to the possibility of the involvement of a foreign state actor.
The incident marked one of the most high-profile data breaches targeting a Government-backed entity in the country. The exploited databases contained personally identifiable information of patients and healthcare workers — and administrative records on blood donors, ambulances, vaccination and caregivers, and employee log-in credentials. The records of nearly 3-4 crore patients are suspected to have been compromised.
The Indian Express has learnt that AIIMS had done the system administration and design of its servers on its own, outside of Government platforms like the National Informatics Centre (NIC).
Express Network
India, Israel ‘natural allies’, share democratic ideals: President Herzog (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
India and Israel are “natural allies” who are united by a fundamental commitment to the democratic ideals upon which they were founded, Israeli President Isaac Herzog has said, as he made a rare appearance at an exhibition here featuring Indian deities and temple rituals.
Herzog attended a cultural event at the Israel Museum on Thursday evening to inaugurate the new exhibition titled ‘Body of Faith: Sculpture from the National Museum of India.’ He called the exhibition a byproduct of the growing friendship between the two countries.
India and Israel are natural allies, united by a fundamental commitment to the democratic ideals upon which both our nations were founded. Yet this evening transcends politics, commerce — even diplomacy.
This evening shines a light on our shared humanity while paying tribute to the rich history and cultural legacy of the Indian people,” Herzog, who made a rare appearance because of “his love for India.
This exhibition, literally ‘spirit within matter’ in Hebrew, is yet another byproduct of the growing friendship between the Indian and Israeli nations and a reflection of the deep resonance of arts and culture that our nations share.
Govt & Politics
Electoral bonds sold in March 2018 were printed the previous month: RTI replies (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The first set of electoral bonds for political funding was printed in February 2018 and put on sale from March 1 that year even as the scheme did not have a sale window in March, replies to the Right to Information (RTI) pleas by an activist reveal.
According to the RTI reply received by transparency campaigner Commodore Lokesh Batra (retd), the bonds were not sold in January 2018, which would have been the first window after the scheme was introduced, as they were printed in February and March that year.
The November 29 RTI reply from India Security Press, Nashik, which prints electoral bonds, says that 1,71,250 and 4,33,000 bonds of different denominations were printed on February 23 and March 1, respectively, in 2018.
The sale of the first tranche (in March) began in the run-up to the Karnataka polls in May 2018, with Assembly elections in Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya having been completed in February that year.
Electoral bonds worth Rs 222 crore were sold between March 1 and 9 in 2018 at four branches of the State Bank of India (SBI), the only bank authorised by the government for the job, according to an RTI reply by SBI in 2019 to Batra.
After being announced by then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his 2017-18 Budget speech on February 1, 2017, the Electoral Bond Scheme-2018 was notified by the ministry on January 2, 2018.
The bonds were to be sold for 10-day period each in January, April, July and October every year, with an additional 30-day period allowed in a year with Lok Sabha elections.
Editorial Page
Maritime stocktaking (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
The 30-month-long Sino-Indian military impasse in the Himalayas and China’s strategic posturing in the South China Sea should be clear pointers for India’s decision-makers that maritime power will have a critical role to play as an instrument of state policy in future outcomes.
Navy Day, celebrated annually to commemorate a famous naval victory, and to remind us of our maritime heritage, also provides an opportunity for “maritime stocktaking.
Still smarting from the ignominy of its — government imposed — inaction in the 1965 Indo-Pak war, the navy’s leadership had pre-determined that maritime power would play a pivotal role in the 1971 conflict.
On the night of December 4, 1971, a force of small missile boats audaciously approached Karachi port to unleash missile salvoes that sank warships, set alight huge fuel reserves, bottled up the Pakistan Navy and blockaded merchant shipping.
In the Bay of Bengal, while INS Vikrant’s aircraft mounted sustained attacks on East Pakistan’s airfields, ports and riverine traffic, its escorts cast a naval cordon that ensured that neither reinforcement nor evacuation was possible for the Pakistani army. The fact that maritime dominance had expedited Pakistan’s surrender, however, failed to lift the pall of “sea-blindness” over Raisina Hill.
This is also an appropriate occasion to remind fellow citizens of some outstanding figures in our maritime past. The navy of 10th century South Indian Emperor Rajendra Chola vanquished the Sumatra-based Sri Vijaya thalassocracy to establish Chola power across present-day Malaysia and Indonesia.
Measuring food security (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, Social Justice)
This refers to the article, ‘Trivialising hunger(IE, November 10). The article is spurred by the Global Hunger Index 2022, which ranks India 107th out of the 121 countries monitored in 2021.
The report is published by Concern Worldwide, an international NGO, using one of FAO’s statistics, among others, to compute its index.
While we agree with the seriousness of hunger and the importance of rigorous monitoring to inform policy, the article contains several serious errors.
FAO is committed to valid and reliable food security measures. Food security exists when all people at all times have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
It is only by identifying those who are food insecure that effective policies can be designed to address the root causes of the problem.
The article attempts to undermine technical aspects of the way FAO measures food security to argue that the report’s ranking doesn’t reflect the reality and that food insecurity is not a problem in India.
The fact: India’s ranking results from the use of the Indian government’s official statistics, the National Family Health Survey, which reveals the rates of acute malnutrition in children under the age of five to be among the highest in the world.
The same official data source also confirms that disconcertingly high rates of child mortality and chronic malnutrition persist in India, despite clear progress in the past few years. The Global Hunger Index was informed by the same official data source.
Economy
Facial Recognition Technology: How Digi yatra works at airports (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Starting Thursday, the government has introduced paperless entry at select airports to make air travel hassle-free. Under this initiative, airports will use a facial recognition software called ‘DigiYatra’ for entry. This means, passengers won’t need to carry their ID card and boarding pass.
In the first phase, the initiative will be launched at seven airports, starting with three — Delhi, Bengaluru, and Varanasi, followed by four airports namely Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune, and Vijayawada by March 2023. Subsequently, the technology will be implemented across the country.
The Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL), run by GMR, had in August announced the soft launch of the Centre’s DigiYatra initiative, rolling out the beta version of its app for Android platforms.
The Delhi airport has the required infrastructure set up at the airport’s Terminal 3, and other airports are also setting up the requisite infra for it.
DigiYatra envisages that travellers pass through various checkpoints at the airport through paperless and contactless processing, using facial features to establish their identity, which would be linked to the boarding pass.
‘With this technology, the entry of passengers would be automatically processed based on the facial recognition system at all checkpoints – including entry into the airport, security check areas, aircraft boarding, etc.
The facility will be available for passengers taking domestic flights at Delhi’s Terminal 3, Bengaluru and Varanasi airports. DigiYatra will be launched at four more airports — Hyderabad, Pune, Vijaywada and Kolkata — by next March. Later, DigiYatra will be rapidly rolled out across all other airports.
Among airlines, passengers travelling Air India, Vistara and IndiGo on their domestic network can avail this facility at the three airports. SpiceJet, GoFirst and Akasa Air are yet to offer the DigiYatra facility.
Explained
After SC’s EPFO order (Page no. 18)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
With the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) yet to issue any guidelines after the Supreme Court’s judgment on higher pension last month, the All India EPF Staff Federation has written to the Central Provident Fund Commissioner (CPFC), seeking clarity on details including the formula to calculate pension, and the options available to subscribers who retired after September 2014.
Federation Secretary General R Krupakaran has complained to CPFC Neelam Shami Rao that “the Pension Division of Head Office is yet to issue any direction/guidelines so as to deal with the higher pension cases in line with the SC order”, and that field offices were finding it difficult to answer queries from members and pensioners.
The federation has also asked for increasing staff as the workload of each office is expected to rise “manifold” once the SC order is implemented.
On November 4, a three-judge Bench of then Chief Justice of India U U Lalit, and Justices Aniruddha Bose and Sudhanshu Dhulia, upheld the Employees’ Pension (Amendment) Scheme, 2014, and said the amendments to the scheme shall apply to employees of exempted establishments as they do for the employees of regular establishments. There are about 1,300 companies in the list of the EPFO’s exempted establishments.
The SC allowed another opportunity to EPFO members who have availed of the Employees’ Pension Scheme (EPS), to opt for higher annuity over the next four months. Employees who were existing EPS members as on September 1, 2014 can contribute up to 8.33 per cent of their ‘actual’ salaries — as against 8.33 per cent of the pensionable salary capped at Rs 15,000 every month — towards pension.
Remains of Goose-necked dinosaur found: what a study says about it (Page no. 18)
(GS Paper 3, Species in News)
The expansive dinosaur group that included big predators such as T. rex also was populated by a number of oddballs, weirdos and outcasts.
A newly described dinosaur from Mongolia – the size of a goose and looking a bit like one, too – fits that description.
The dinosaur, called Natovenatorpolydontus, lived about 72 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period and was built like a diving bird with a streamlined body while possessing a goose-like elongated neck and a long flattened snout with a mouth bearing more than 100 small teeth.
“Natovenator has many peculiar characteristics,” said paleontologistYuong-Nam Lee of Seoul National University in South Korea, lead author of the research published in the journal Communications Biology.
While it was a cousin of speedy little predator Velociraptor, Natovenator was adapted to a semi-aquatic lifestyle in a freshwater ecosystem, perhaps floating on rivers and lakes, paddling with its front limbs, and using its flexible neck to catch fish and insects or diving underwater to capture its prey.
Its well-preserved remains – a skeleton about 70% complete – were unearthed in the Gobi Desert, which over the decades has been a treasure trove for dinosaur fossils.
Natovenator is part of the dinosaur group called theropods – sharing traits including bipedalism – best known for large meat-eaters including Tyrannosaurus, Tarbosaurus and Giganotosaurus.
But the theropods, many of which were feathered, branched out in unusual directions with examples such as long-clawed ground sloth-like Therizinosaurus, ostrich-like Struthiomimus, termite-eating Mononykus and the entire bird lineage.
Not many of the dinosaurs called “non-avian” – in other words, not the birds – are known to have lived a semi-aquatic lifestyle.
MBBS students protest in Haryana: Why govt concessions failed (Page no. 18)
(GS Paper 2, Government Policies and Interventions)
For the past month, MBBS students of Haryana’s government medical colleges have been agitating against the state’s bond policy.
In face of the protests, on the government announced tweaks in the rules. However, the students have said they are not satisfied with the changes.
As per the policy introduced in 2020, MBBS students have to sign a bond-cum-agreement to compulsorily serve for seven years in government hospitals after graduating from state-run medical institutions. If they join a private job before that, they have to deposit the bond amount of Rs 36.8 lakh with the government.
Priya Kaushik, an MBBS student leader from Rohtak’s PGIMS, said they had been oposed to the policy since 2020, but could not launch an agitation then as gatherings were not possible amid Covid-19.
For the past month, students have staged protests in different forms including a chain hunger strike at PGIMS. According to the agitators, protests have also been on at Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee government medical college, Chhainsa; Kalpana Chawla Goverment Medical College, Karnal; SHKM Government Medical ColleheNalhar, Mewat; and BPS Government Medical College for Women, Khanpur Kalan, Sonepat.
The agitating students want that the period of compulsory government job be reduced from seven years to one year, and the bond of Rs 36.8 lakh be brought down to Rs 5 lakh.
They are also seeking a guranteed job within four months of completion of the MBBS course. According to the agitators, the banks should be removed from the picture for bond purposes and the students should have a link with their institutes only.