Department of Energy website hacked 159 times in 48 months

A report from USA today has revealed that in a time span of 48 months or 4 years, the website of the Department of Energy was hacked 159 times. The shocking revelation further stated that these hacks took place between 2010 and 2014 and that these were identified only in the year 2014 by the DOE Joint Cyber security Center.

A request under the Freedom of Information Act has revealed the incident. In total there were 1131 hacking attempts that took place in the span of these 48 months and that 159 of them were successful in gaining access to the data on the website. The instance is followed by the reports of the leakage the identification details and other information of more 104,000 employees of DOE being leaked from the website of the department in the year 2013.

The hacking incident of over 104,000 accounts also revealed that these accounts had very simple or default passwords that were kept unchanged for a very long time. This made it easier for the hackers to gain access to the information of the employees once they could successfully hack into the website of the department.

The recently reported incident of 159 hacking instances has once again embarrassed the government that has been facing several hacking instances for quite some time now. The hacks have been taking place from ISIS supporting hackers, Anonymous, Chinese and Russian hackers. It also shows the vulnerability of the government systems and the failure of the cyber security system of the government that has failed in preventing these attacks.

With the growing threat in the cyber space and the frequent invasions by the hackers has made it absolutely necessary for the government to prevent such instances from taking place in the future.