Forty websites hacked in four months
Between May and August alone, almost
40 websites belonging to some important government departments with ‘.in’
domain were defaced. India’s country code domains that were targeted included
‘.co.in’, ‘.net.in’, ‘.gov.in’, ‘.org.in’, ‘.nic.in’, ‘.ac.in’, ‘.edu.in’ and
‘.res.in’. Hackers, mostly from abroad, have also been targeting websites with
‘.com’, ‘.org’ and ‘.net’ domains.
During its analysis, CERT-In, which
has been tracking defacement of Indian websites, also found that top
cyberattackers India faced included ‘HuSsY,’ ‘hasnain haxor,’ ‘CouCouM,’
‘BLACKSMITH HACKERS,’ ‘Romantic,’ ‘ALFA TEAM 2012,’ ‘Intruder’ and ‘Team
Patriot.’
Stating that defacing of a website was
an act of cyberterrorism, particularly when the target belonged to critical
government infrastructure, a senior official of the IT Ministry reasoned that
hackers targeted these important websites to reduce public confidence in the
security of a system and its trustworthiness for use for sensitive purposes.
With rising defacements, CERT-In has
circulated a list of security guidelines all critical departments need to
follow.They have been asked to install a potent firewall and anti-spyware and
anti-phishing controls, update their application software regularly and use the
latest Internet browsers, capable of detecting phishing.
