In the latest developments which appear to pose a major threat to national security, the website of Ministry of Defence was reportedly hacked.
In a major cyber threat, the website of Ministry of Defence was today compromised as hackers apparently penetrated its security.
The website - https://mod.gov.in/ - was showing an error a Chinese character appeared on the page. Reuters explained that the Chinese character meant a loose garment as worn by monks and an error message.
The landing page of the website was leading to an error page. The website was later taken down for restoration and the government promised "every possible step required to prevent any such eventuality in the future."
Soon after, the website of the Ministry of Home Affairs also went offline. It was, however, not clear if the website was hacked or was deliberately taken down for maintenance.
The websites of Ministry of Law and Justice and Ministry of Labour and Employment were also not online.
All of these government websites are managed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) which attributed the error to "some technical issue."
"Ministry of Defence website is not hacked. There is some technical issue since 2:30 PM today," NIC said.
Confirming the hacking of the website, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said action has been initiated to restore it.
"Action is initiated after the hacking of MoD website ( http://mod.nic.in ). 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 in a tweet.
Earlier, Twitter handle of the Office of the Defence Minister said, "Issue with the MoD website ( http://mod.nic.in ) has been taken note of. Appropriate action has been initiated."
In 2016, a total of 199 government websites were hacked in India, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had told the Parliament.
In fact, more than 700 websites under the Indian government have been hacked from 2013 to 2016.
Last year in January, the website of the National Security Guard (NSG), the Indian Special Forces unit combating terror activities, was also hacked posing unprecedented threat to national security.
The website was, however, blocked immediately by the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT.IN).
(With ANI inputs)
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