PHOTO: FILEFinance Minister Shaukat Tarin has decided to take a third-party view before taking any action in case of the worst ever cyber-attack that brought down the Federal Board of Revenue’s (FBR) data centre for more than 72 hours. But these warnings were ignored, resulting into either taking over or shutting down about 360 virtual machines of the FBR data centre, said the sources. The 360 machines are almost half of total virtual machines, indicating the extent of damage caused to the data. To a question on whether he issued any instructions to shutdown systems to avoid data hacking, FBR Chairman Asim Ahmad replied, “No such instructions were given by me. These operationalised projects include FBR website, Paysis website, eFBR website, IRIS website, AJK IRIS website; IMS web service, PRA web service and Tax Asaan Mobile application, stated the FBR.

Source: The Express Tribune August 17, 2021 03:33 UTC