Ministry of Defence website hacked by suspected Chinese hackers, Nirmala Sitharaman says action initiated

The website of Ministry of Defence was on Friday hacked, according to media reports.

According to ANI, Mandarin characters were appearing on the website homepage. The MOD's website (https://mod.gov.in/) as of now cannot be reached. “The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later” message is being flashed on the home page.

Ministry of Defence website hacked, Chinese characters appearing on the website home page. pic.twitter.com/VBzWXLC8EM

— ANI (@ANI) April 6, 2018

Following the incident, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharam said the website will be restored shortly. “Action is initiated after the hacking of the website. The website shall be restored shortly. Needless to say, every possible step required to prevent any such eventuality in the future will be taken she said."

Action is initiated after the hacking of MoD website ( https://t.co/7aEc779N2b ). The website shall be restored shortly. Needless to say, every possible step required to prevent any such eventuality in the future will be taken. @DefenceMinIndia @PIB_India @PIBHindi

— Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharaman) April 6, 2018

This isn't the first time hackers have managed to breach the government's web security.

From April 2017 to Janauary 2018, over 22,000 Indian websites, including 114 government portals were hacked between April 2017 and January 2018.

Representational image. Reuters

“As per information reported to and tracked by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), a total of 22,207 Indian websites including 114 government websites were hacked during April 2017 to January 2018. A total number of 493 affected websites were used for malware propagation,” Minister of State for Electronics and IT KJ Alphons said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

Besides, as per the information reported to and tracked by National Informatics Centre (NIC), a total number of 74 and six government websites hosted on NICNET were hacked during 2017 and 2018 (till February), respectively

Recently, according to Scroll, a group of hackers had claimed to have accessed a section of the Rajya Sabha website that only members of the Upper House and administrators of the website are supposed to have entry to.

The hackers also managed to gain access to BJP president Amit Shah's email inbox on the Rajya Sabha domain, and text messages that can be sent by the public to the Rajya Sabha members on their official numbers, the report added.

The Ministry of Home Affairs website was hacked in Februrary 2017. The MHA website was immediately blocked by the National Informatics Centre.

With inputs from PTI