In the wake of the global data leak affecting 16 billion login records, reported in June, the government internally advised its employees to migrate to the new National Informatics Centre (NIC) email domain and platform, @mail.gov.in, sources said.
Earlier, government officials' email IDs were under the domain name @nic.in.
In late 2023, Chennai-based IT firm Zoho won a tender to handle government's email id services. "It is advised that departments migrate to the new Zoho platform," sources said.
Sources said that the government has not yet reported any compromised government email IDs in this massive data breach, and the advisory was given as a precautionary measure.
Around the same time the data breach came to light, a defence-related government email ID fell victim to a phishing attack, sources told Moneycontrol.
The email reportedly contained a malicious link, and all recipients were advised not to click on any links or download attachments from the message.
While it was initially suspected that the phishing attack might be linked to the broader data leak, senior government officials have ruled out that possibility, treating it instead as an isolated incident involving a single compromised account.
In June, cybersecurity agency CERT-In issued an advisory warning about the exposure of over 16 billion login credentials from major online platforms including Apple, Google, Facebook, Telegram, GitHub, and several VPN services.
The leaked dataset contained usernames, passwords, authentication tokens, session cookies, and associated metadata.
The advisory (CIAD-2025-0024), issued on June 23, urged individuals to immediately update passwords, enable multi-factor authentication (MFA), and adopt phishing-resistant login methods like passkeys where available.
Organisations were also advised to implement zero-trust security models, monitor suspicious login activity, and secure misconfigured databases. CERT-In warned that the leaked data is now circulating on the dark web, increasing the risk of cyberattacks ranging from credential stuffing to business email compromise.
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