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Once, while conducting an information sharing and gathering session with some of my old friends, one of them asked me an intriguing question. Are you the lonely hacker in whole India, who is always hell bent on saving the websites and spreading the cyber crime awareness?

It was really a peculiar situation for me, as I hated to lie to him, and though if I told him the truth, he may consider no more of me. Still, I gave him a very nice and genuine answer, to which he was very pleased and was really proud after knowing that even though late, India has started showing up somewhere in the world.

Obviously, I won't be able to tell you the exact answers I told him. What I told him, was about the hacker communities and hacker conferences that existed all throughout India. And it was not such, that they were formed right now. They had been there, but their existence was limited and minimal. Indian Snakes was the first known group, which brought in with it like a revolution on the world cyber space with the infamous YAHA worn that they coded. Then the next big thing was h4cky0u.org, which involved in a wide range of practices like defacing, Botnet uploads, etc..

Then comes the list of not so active yet one of the powerful hackers' unions, the Andhra Hackers. They were responsible for information sharing and discussion forums on their portals. Another famous group, known as Indian Cyber Warriors (ICW), is famous for its attacks on the Pakistani websites.

The most recent and the widely spread and quite the famous among script kiddies as well as the new evolving genre of ethical hackers is Indian Cyber Army (ICA). With initiatively active, and progressing rigorously as well as believing in replying back to other countries hack exploits in Indian cyber space.

Hacking is increasing its fan base not as something to learn or to have a pastime, but as a more mature subject, thanks to few people who took the initiative. Hacking is like enjoying and sharing a quite bigger stage than other people around you. And if government has started to offer courses in this field, I would be overwhelmed. But for those, who thrive to achieve this mettle without completing any course, the biggest key is to hack it yourself and learn it yourself, without help of any books or tools written by people. That's what we people have done and have emerged out like a phoenix.