Finance Ministry, Planning
Commission among those targeted Government websites are turning out to be soft targets for hackers. In the
last three months alone, as many as 112 websites, including that of the
Planning Commission, the Finance Ministry and
various State government agencies, were hacked or defaced.
“During the period December 2011 to
February 2012, a total number of 112 government websites were
hacked,” Minister of State for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot told the Lok
Sabha on Wednesday.
While the website of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd was hacked on December 4, 2011
by the ‘H4tr!ck' hacker group, the websites of Finance, Health, Human Resource Development ministries and Planning Commission were also defaced. Various
State government websites that came under attack were from Andhra Pradesh,
Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Sikkim, Manipur,
Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and
Gujarat.
Mr. Pilot said the Department of
Information Technology and the National Informatics Centre (NIC) that host the
majority of government websites were upgrading their skills to tackle
the ever-growing threat from hackers. Firewalls were being upgraded
and new filters added to ensure that
hackers could not target government websites.
Notably, the government had to face
major embarrassment last year after the Central Bureau of Investigation website was hacked and
defaced by programmers, who identified themselves as the “Pakistani Cyber
Army.” It took weeks before the website was restored. However, it was
after this episode that the NIC took various measures to prevent government websites from
getting hacked. As per industry estimates, over 14,000 government and
corporate websites were hacked/defaced in 2011.
source:The hindu :
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