On Thursday (April 13), a security alert was issued by the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C), urging concerned officials to take preventive measures for protecting 12000 government websites from an Indonesia-based ‘hacktivist’ group, reported MoneyControl.
I4C, which is run by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), has said in its alert, “It has been reported that websites of state and central government are potentially being targeted.”
It further warned that the ‘hacktivist group’ had launched a potential Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on 12000 State and Central government websites.
”A hacktivist Indonesia group is claiming to target 12,000 websites of India and the threat actors are launching DoS/DDoS attacks,” the alert added.
While speaking about the matter, the founder of ‘Pingsafe’ Anand Prakash told MoneyControl, “Post this alert, government employees need to ensure that they do not fall for social engineering attacks; do not click on unknown emails or links, which can compromise security of such websites.”
“They also ensure that all software updates are up-to-date,” Anand Prakash, founder and CEO of cybersecurity firm Pingsafe said,” he added. In 2022, the Indian government reportedly witnessed 19 ransomware attacks against its various organisations.
India sought Interpol’s help against Indonesian, and Malaysian hackers
In July last year, India sought Interpol’s help to nab two hacker groups, namely, ‘Dragon Force Malaysia’ and ‘Hacktivist Indonesia’ for waging a cyber war against the country over former BJP leader Nupur Sharma’s comments on Prophet Muhammad.
After attacking government websites, the two groups asked Muslim hacker groups from across the world to join them in their attack.
They claimed that their attack was in response to Nupur Sharma’s comments on a news channel debate. A lookout notice was issued for both the groups, which hacked over 2,000 websites.