Jaipur, Oct 14 — The Rajasthan Police cyber wing (R4C) has issued an advisory urging government officials and employees to strengthen the security of their official email IDs and prevent unauthorised access.
Additional Director General of Police (Cyber Crime) V.K. Singh said cybercriminals pose a persistent threat of stealing and misusing government email IDs and passwords.
Instances of government email login credentials being leaked and offered for sale on the dark web have come to the notice of the Security Operations Centre (SOC), he added.
Singh cautioned that government email IDs are used not only for official correspondence but also to access Rajasthan SSO and other critical government services.
A leak of email credentials could therefore result in unauthorised access to departmental information, confidential documents and other sensitive digital resources.
Government employees often use their official email IDs to register on private platforms, including Amazon, Flipkart, Zomato, Facebook, cab-booking services and gaming apps. If they use the same password for these platforms and their government email accounts, a data breach on any of these services could compromise their official accounts.
Cybercriminals may exploit stolen credentials to gain unauthorised access to government systems and digital resources, including SSO, SecLAN and RajSWAN, potentially exposing sensitive departmental information.
The advisory urges officials and employees to remain alert to receiving unexpected login alerts or one-time passwords (OTPs), finding emails in the 'Sent' folder that they did not send, being automatically logged out of their government email accounts or discovering that their passwords have been changed, finding emails marked as 'Read' that they have not opened, receiving unusual or suspicious messages from colleagues' official email IDs and immediate steps to secure Government email accounts.
Officials who have used their government email IDs to register on shopping or social media apps have been advised to remove those IDs from the respective profiles and replace them with personal email addresses.
They should immediately change their government email passwords using a secure device and check whether their email addresses appear in known data breaches through the website haveibeenpwned.com.
Any suspicious activity should be reported promptly to the concerned IT Helpdesk or Security Operations Centre (SOC).