Indian websites losing face

More than 500 websites defaced in September; cyber experts suspect foreign hand

Indian websites losing face

More than 500 websites defaced in September; cyber experts suspect foreign hand

Ramesh Saxena, a small-time garment exporter from Noida, was shocked to see the photograph of a scantily-clad girl on his company's website advertising her 'services to interested clients.' It took Saxena a few minutes to realize his website had been attacked and defaced. As the businessman ran from pillar-to-post to reclaim his site, he found out many small traders like him had been attacked by cyber crooks.

Around 500 websites have reportedly been attacked by cybercriminals in the recent months. According to statistics provided by the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the cyber security agency working under the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, 511 websites with '.in' domain name were defaced in September.

The number of such websites defaced in August was 454, and in the month of July only 261 were attacked. In June, merely 139 were hacked into.

Attack from abroad

Experts suspect the hand of foreign hackers. "Mostly Chinese and Pakistani hackers are attacking websites registered with '.in' domain name as this indicates the site is based in India. Most of the websites on the 'in.com' platform are owned by small businesses and they do not care much about security. So it's easy to hack them," said Delhi-based cyber security expert Vivek Vohra.

No money gain
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Interestingly, most of these sites are not attacked for financial gains. "These sites are attacked so that hackers can test their skills or to spread an agenda. Hackers around the world sharpen their skills by illegally entering into a website. Attackers generally change the homepage and paste a message or a picture which fulfils their agenda," Vohra said.

Besides website defacement, September also saw 550 cyber security breaches that were reported to CERT-In, of which 84 per cent were related to spreading of malware (malicious software) through websites.

692
Number of websites with popular domain names including '.com' and '.org' were attacked by cyber crooks in September.

Defaced?
Website defacement is a form of hacking. It is usually the substitution of the original home page by a system cracker that breaks into a web server and alters the hosted website, creating one of its own. Often the hacker replaces the site's original content with a specific political or social message or erases content from the site.

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