Cyber warfare: Pakistani hackers deface Indian website

Attack comes a day after Modi launched his campaign Digital India in a bid to reform his country through technology

Pakistani hackers on Thursday defaced the website of a regional Indian technology education institute, just a day after PM Narendra Modi launched his Digital India campaign in a bid to reform his country through technology.

Hackers of the "Hacked Pak Cyber Attackers" group defaced the website of the prestigious Chhatisgarh National Institute of Technology (NIT).

Read: India's Gaana.com hacked by Pakistani hacker

The site was defaced and the regular landing page was replaced with a slogan of "Pakistan Zindabad" followed by "nothing harmed just defaced and deleted some vulnerable files, we are Muslim hackers, we hack for cause, not for fun; contact us."

The admin of the NIT website then had to shut down the site for a while restore and revive it.

Allegedly, a Pakistani young man posted the tidings on his Facebook timeline claiming that "National Institute of Technology Raipur Official Website HaCKED AND ROOTED" along with the picture of the successfully hacked page.

Mohit Sahu an expert of the cyber security in India said that he received a message from the hacker on Facebook boasting that he had hacked the webpage.

"He had been accessing NIT's website for a year and had never been tracked down. By hacking, Afzal wanted to show how vulnerable the websites are which can be easily hacked. He had earlier hacked NIT Kolkata's website also, link of which is posted on his wall. The mirror link is what the hacker posts and keeps as log about the sites he had hacked and how they looked like afetr hacking." Mohit said.

Read: Cyber Reforms: Call for new rules after massive hack

Although the site has been recovered, Mohit thinks that threats are still there and the hacker can come again to attack in future. "The hacker still has the 'buzz' and he can hack whenever he wants to again. Buzz is an open source content management system mostly used by amateur users and they are in millions. Once it gets leaked or decoded, anyone can hack the sites."

According to the NIT officials, the hacker had not destroyed the site's database, saying that they would acquire expertise to preempt the attack, and find out the loopholes that made it easier for the hacker to destroy the site.

Earlier, Pakistani hackers had also allegedly hacked India’s Chhattisgarh government environment board website, when the homepage was defaced with slogans like “Free Kashmir… Freedom is our goal” along with pictures from occupied J&K protests. The so-called “Team Pak Cyber Experts” had claimed the attack.

The article originally appeared on Times of India