Over 200 Indian websites defaced, CBI registers case (Third Lead)

NEW DELHI - More than 200 Indian websites, including that of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), were defaced Friday night by a group which identified itself as the “Pakistani Cyber Army”, officials said. The CBI has registered a case with its cyber crime unit.

The majority of the over 200 websites, as listed in Pakistani media reports, were of private organisations, colleges and companies.

The list of 270 websites included domains like plasticschair.com, allindiacapital.org.in, yogaclassesmumbai.com and glowofindia.co.in. Among them, CBI’s website (www.cbi.gov.in) was the only government site to be defaced, with a message from “Pakistan Cyber Army” emblazoned under its banner.

Meanwhile, the CBI, whose website was still down Saturday evening, has filed a case for the defacement of its website, an official said.

“It came to our notice that the official website of the CBI was unauthorisedly accessed and defaced in the intervening night of Dec 3-4. We have registered a case with the cyber crime cell of the CBI under the relevant sections of law,” a CBI official said.

According to the official, the website will be available for public interface at the earliest.

While the banner and index of the website intact, the hackers posted a message, mocking India’s premier investigating agency.

The message read: “This attempt is in response to the Pakistani websites hacked by ‘Indian Cyber Army’. We told u before too…we are sleeping but not dead.”

“Back off kids or we will smoke ur doors off like we did before…let us see what you investigating agency so called CBI can do,” it said.

“Efforts are underway to restore the website with the help of the NIC and the CBI cyber security experts,” said the official.

The website defacers, who ended their message with “Pakistan Zindabad”, claimed to have hacked the “root access” of the National Informatics Centre (NIC), which hosts the CBI website.

However, NIC officials dismissed the claim, asserting that none of its servers had been compromised.

There had been several long meetings in the NIC and the CBI to discuss the webiste defacement, but officials pointed out that it was a small intrusion into just one official site. The NIC hosts around 30,000 government websites.

The Pakistani hackers claimed that the attack was in response to a previous attack into 36 government websites earlier this month by a group calling itself Indian Cyber Army.

According to media reports, the Pakistani websites hacked included those of its ministry of foreign affairs, the Pakistan Navy and the National Accountability Bureau, which were emblazoned with a message that it was a tribute to 26/11 Mumbai terror attack victims.