Transport Department Services Halted for a Month After Arson, Looting, and Server Theft
असोज २३, २०८२ १०:३३
Kathmandu: Services of the Transport Management Department have been halted for a month following arson, vandalism, and looting during the Gen-Z movement on September 9. The department’s central server was completely damaged, bringing all services to a standstill.
Department spokesperson Ganeshman Rai said the main building was extensively damaged and is now under repair. “We’re currently operating from a temporary structure,” he said.
According to Bhanubhakta Joshi, a computer engineer at the department, work to restore the system is underway but remains challenging as most of the hardware was either stolen or destroyed. “We are trying to resume some services within 10 to 12 days,” he said.
The department’s website was hosted in the same data center, which was also damaged in the fire. During the chaos, hard drives from two of the four servers were stolen. Joshi said the team is now trying to restart operations using the remaining servers and backup data. “We are currently assembling the system at GIDC,” he added.
Since the department lacks SAN storage, it has requested one from the Security Printing Center to manage its hardware needs. “The government procurement process takes time, so we are trying to repair and reuse the servers we have,” Joshi said. The team is also testing how much load the repaired servers can handle.
Essential services such as license renewal, new license applications, and website operation will resume once the servers are functional. However, license printing will take longer to restart.
Joshi said the department’s Italian-made license printing machine was damaged during the vandalism. “We’ll know if it’s usable only after the manufacturer’s engineer inspects it,” he said. The department still has blank cards for printing, but it’s unclear whether their chips remain functional. “Since the cards were exposed to heat, the chips may have been affected,” he said, adding that preparations are underway to issue a tender for new printers and cards.
Risk of Data Misuse
Joshi also raised concerns about the possible misuse of data stored on the stolen hard drives. The drives contained sensitive biographical (name, citizenship number) and biometric (fingerprint, photo, signature) data of service recipients.
“It appears that someone with technical knowledge carried out the theft,” he said. “The data can be stolen and possibly sold, posing a serious privacy risk.”
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