Bengaluru police register FIR over cyberattack on Karnataka property registration portal

“Kaveri 2.0 faced certain performance issues during the month of December 2024. Upon analysis and input from the Centre for Smart Governance, it was found that these issues were caused by a malicious DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack using automated tools or bots,” K A Dayananda, Inspector General of Registration, stated in a complaint to the Central CEN police station on Friday.

“A similar attack took place in January 2025, where extreme high traffic was observed from citizen-side users for Encumbrance Certificate searches, which was eight times more than usual. At some point, it was reported that 6.2 lakh requests were received from malicious users in a span of two hours. These users were using random keywords to perform searches,” says the complaint based on which an FIR had been registered.

The Kaveri portal has a search strength of around 2.5 lakh queries per day but unidentified persons used artificial intelligence to bombard the portal with a huge number of searches in a short span leading to the crash of the application.

According to the police complaint, fake accounts were created by the cyber attackers “and entries were made into the database using these fake accounts through automated tools or bots”. The CSG had collected a list of 62 email accounts originating from 14 IP addresses which were used to push the data, stated the complaint by the IGR.

“As Kaveri 2.0 is a critical application of the Government, and such malicious attack is a serious cybersecurity threat, this targeted assault on Government portal poses a significant risk to its security and operational integrity. This incident demands urgent attention and immediate remedial action,” IGR Dayananda has reported.

The Kaveri 2.0 application is hosted at the State Data Centre, facilitates seamless property registration, and provides Encumbrance Certificates and Certified Copies.

The application is developed and maintained by the Centre for Smart Governance (CSG) under the e-Governance Department of the state government. “Kaveri 2.0 aims to enhance transparency, efficiency, and accessibility in land and property transactions by providing an online interface for citizens, legal professionals, and government officials,” the IGR said.

“Kaveri 2.0 application which was affected by a DDoS attack over the last one week has now been fully restored and is operating normally,” the IGR said on February 5.

The Bengaluru police have registered a case under Sections 66 and 66 D of the Information Technology Act, 2008, for computer-related offences.