THREE PARTY SUMMIT BEGINS

THREE PARTY SUMMIT BEGINS UPDATE

Kathmandu, 26 May: A summit of Maoists, NC and UML began immediately after the collective meeting of the three party chiefs with President Dr. Ram Baran Yadav Thursday.
Aides are assisting the top leaders at the dialogue in Baluwatar.
Meanwhile, three Madeshbadi parties meet in the capital Thursday concluded the assembly session can’t be extended without Moaist surrender of their weapons.
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16 GOVT. WEBSITES HACKED

Kathmandu, 26 May:: Cyber criminals have hacked official websites of sixteen government offices in this month alone. The alarming rise in incidences of hacking has raised questions about the security of web servers used by the government, Samiksha Koiralalwrites in Republica.
The obvious question here is: why has the government not able to track the hackers even as they have been hacking the same websites repeatedly? Concerned officials have no satisfactory answer.
“As hackers penetrated into our system, we could not be sure of the authenticity of data,” said an official at the Financial Comptroller´s Office.

Vice-president of High Level Commission of Information Technology (HLCIT), Manohar Kumar Bhattarai said the major reason for increasing incidents of hacking was lack of law enforcement. “We have to accept weaknesses in internet security and lack of awareness,” he said, adding that a majority of people are still unaware that hacking is a punishable offense.

On Saturday, the official website of the government of Nepal (www.govnepal.gov.np) was hacked for the fourth time. The website provides government related information and links of other ministries´ and offices´ websites.

Agencies that witnessed their sites hacked in May include, Public Procurement Monitoring Office (www.ppmo.gov.np), Judicial Council (judicialcouncil.gov.np), Juvenile Justice Coordination Committee (jjcc.gov.np) and District Education Office, Myagdi (doemyagdi.gov.np), among others.

IT experts suggest that hacking can be avoided if programming and server is secure. Weakness of website can be detected by conducting website security audit.
“Some of these websites are still in the control of the hackers,” said a source. These websites were hacked in name of different hackers like Ashiyane, Team MOSTA, MMA, V4 team and so on.

HLCIT is supposed to conduct website security audit of government offices. “However, repeated hacking of government websites suggests that their security audit have not been conducted so far,” said an official. He also raised questions over the security features of the main host of government website, National Information Technology Centre (NITC).
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