Foreign Hackers Suspected in Sarathi Portal Outage; NIC Says Data Safe
HYDERABAD: A day after a suspected technical glitch disrupted services on the Sarathi transport portal across India, a senior National Informatics Centre (NIC) official said foreign hackers, suspected to be operating from Pakistan or China, may have targeted the platform’s servers.
Speaking to a Media, NIC Telangana state coordinator S. Kasi Reddy said an abnormal surge in traffic triggered the disruption.
Sudden Traffic Surge Triggered Shutdown
“On Monday, traffic on the Sarathi app surged to 95,000 against the normal load of around 5,000 users. Our cybersecurity team detected the anomaly and shut down the portal as a precautionary measure. Though we restored the system later, the portal continued to experience glitches because it had to regain capacity, which slowed the servers and caused intermittent outages,” he said.
Kasi Reddy said the Union ministry of home affairs has been tracking attempts by hackers from Pakistan and China to target government portals.
“Our firewalls and cybersecurity teams successfully withstand such attacks, and our data remains safe and secure,” he said. “Hackers constantly target government portals that have payment gateways. The ministry of home affairs stays one step ahead in preventing such attacks.”
Services Affected Across RTOs
According to NIC, the Sarathi portal resumed operations on Tuesday afternoon. The platform provides services such as learner’s licence applications, driving licence issuance, slot bookings, licence renewals and International Driving Permits. It also supports the monitoring of driving schools and instructors.
Officials said the portal remained largely non-functional until late Tuesday afternoon, preventing the processing of transactions. At several Regional Transport Offices (RTOs), staff accepted non-payment applications manually and planned to upload them later. Hundreds of applicants, however, waited for hours and eventually left without accessing services.
NIC Monitoring Portal Performance
NIC senior technical director Guntuku Prasad said maintenance teams continued to monitor the platform.
“Each state has a dedicated maintenance team. The portal resumed operations on Tuesday afternoon. We have not received any information suggesting a problem specific to the Telangana transport department,” he said.
Cyber Threats Becoming More Sophisticated
Cybersecurity experts said attacks on public-sector portals have increased in recent years, prompting agencies such as the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre and CERT-In to strengthen monitoring and mitigation efforts.
Suryanarayana Reddy, founder and director of SmarNcode Technologies, said cyber threats are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
“Cyberattacks on public portals and listed companies occur continuously, which is why organisations are strengthening cybersecurity measures. Hackers introduce new malware every day. By using chatbots and AI tools, they are launching increasingly sophisticated attacks. It is like a war, and cybersecurity teams must stay prepared every day,” he said.
