10 year imprisonment for hacking into GST database

Hacking into the government’s goods and services tax (GST) database and its associated infrastructure dependencies installed at GST Network (GSTN) will now lead to 10-year imprisonment. These assets have been declared as protected systems by the Ministry of Finance under the Income Tax (IT) Act.

Protected systems are part of critical information infrastructure and their destruction can have a debilitating impact on national security, economy, public health or safety. The facilities will get additional security cover since the information stored on the assets has national security significance.

Access to the system and its facilities has been limited to authorised GSTN employees, designated tax officers of the central government, state governments, union territories, auditing agencies and accounting authorities.

“The Ministry of Finance hereby declares the Goods and Services Tax Database and its associated infrastructure dependencies installed at Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), as the protected system for the purpose of said Act,” a notification dated February 4 noted.

Under sub-section (1) of Section 70 of the Information Technology Act, 2000, the government can declare any computer resource as a protected system. As per the Act a person who attempts to access such a system can be jailed up to 10 years, besides being fined.