Pakistan's tax office services go dark after migration project goes awry

Pakistan's Federal Board of Revenue – the nation's tax office – has experienced a lengthy outage after a migration project went bad, perhaps as the result of a cyber-attack. The Board (FBR) has acknowledged that an upgrade process encountered "unforeseen anomalies" that resulted in an outage to its public-facing services from …

[Lil Endian]

Come on Simon! Baiting me with "migration" in the title, hoping I'd ask if the job was outsourced to Dallas PD? Well I won't!

Defo much more of a breach story than a migration thing. And FBR do seem to be handling it better than others.

More info required please!

[Anonymous South African Coward]

I do hope Simon responds, and not with a >KZERRRRT<...

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Time passes. Thorin starts singing about gold.

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>KZERRRRRT<

[Lil Endian]

>KZERRRRT< would be an honour!

[elsergiovolador]

Please

Local reports suggest Microsoft Hyper-V crack was the cause, as rumours swirl of data leak

Don't. Say. Crack, Jez. Yeah? Please. Not now. 'Cause you saying crack makes me think about crack and I love crack. So can you not say crack?

[Anonymous South African Coward]

Re: Please

Clap! Snap! the black crack!

Grip, grab! Pinch, nab!

And down down to Goblin-town

You go, my lad!

Clash, crash! Crush, smash!

Hammer and tongs! Knocker and gongs!

Pound, pound, far underground!

Ho, ho! my lad!

Swish, smack! Whip crack!

Batter and beat! Yammer and bleat!

Work, work! Nor dare to shirk,

While Goblins quaff, and Goblins laugh,

Round and round far underground

Below, my lad!

[WolfFan]

Cue reports

Of Indian/Israeli/both hackers roaming at will throughout Official Pakistani Cyberspace. With or without assistance from Albion Perfide and/or Uncle Sugar.

[J__M__M]

am I missing something?

"A Hyper-V attack is certainly a plausible explanation for the incident, as CVE-2021-28476 can crash hosts"

Unless Pakistan's Federal Board of Revenue allows citizens to spin up VM's on government servers, CVE-2021-28476 probably ain't the problem. To crash a host you have to compromise a guest... and the guest has to be Ubuntu Focal. Plus it's kind of tough to steal data from a blue screened server.

[Hazmoid]

Someone decided paying tax was not on the cards

I'm thinking someone decided that they didn't want to pay tax so they crashed the Tax office servers :) Fortunately it appears the IT department had contingencies in place.