158 govt websites hacked in last two years: IT Ministry in Rajya Sabha

Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in a written reply to Rajya Sabha informed that a total of 158 websites of Central and State Governments were hacked during the year 2018 and 2019 respectively.

As per the information reported to and tracked by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), a total number of 110 and 48 websites of Central Ministries and Departments and State Governments were hacked during the year 2018 and 2019 respectively.

The government says that there have been attempts from time-to-time to launch cyber attacks on Indian cyber-space. It has been observed that attackers are compromising computer systems located in different parts of the world and use masquerading techniques and hidden servers to hide the identity of actual systems from which the attacks are being launched.

According to the logs analyzed and made available to CERT-In, the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the computers from where the attacks appear to be originated belong to various countries including China, Pakistan, Netherlands, France, Taiwan, Tunisia, Russia, Algeria and Serbia.

''In tune with the dynamic nature of Information Technology and emerging cyber threats, continuous efforts are required to be made by owners to protect networks by way of hardening and deploying appropriate security controls," Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in the Parliament.