Pro-Pak hackers invade government site

Pro-Pakistanis have broken into the Maharashtra government’s server and hacked the Wardha zilla parishad (district council) website (www.zpwardha.gov.in).

They put up an abusive message in poor English claiming that Jammu and Kashmir had been ruined by the Indian army and that the state was never a part of India. The hackers, who go by the name of ‘XXx_Death_xXX’, went on to mock Indian websites, saying, “Everyday you guys get hacked but still learn nothing (sic) .”

Zilla parishad officials came to know of the hacking on Friday evening and promptly shut down the site.

Rajesh Aggarwal, IT secretary, said. “Many of the sites put up by zilla parishads or even by gram panchayats are done by local operators and security can be a bit weak.”

Arguing that no site in the world is hacker-proof, he admitted that as more government departments at various levels put up websites to make information available at the click of a mouse, threat from rogue groups remains a concern. “We are shifting many of our sites to servers maintained by NIC (National Informatics Centre, which looks after key government websites), for security reasons,” Aggarwal said.

But, that may not solve the problem, as even the NIC’s sites have been hacked into.

Maharashtra has ambitious e-governance projects lined up, including uploading information and receiving online applications. So far, most websites hacked into are either of the Centre or of the military.  Hacking the site of a remote district council was, therefore, unexpected.