Centre issues alert as 'Hacktivist Indonesia' targets 1200 Indian government websites

A hacker group named ‘Hacktivist Indonesia’ claimed to have attacked 12,000 Indian government websites. According to ANI, the list of sites include several websites of Indian central and state institutions. On Thursday, the Ministry of Home Affairs’ Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Center (I4C) stated that the hacker group has the potential to attack these Indian governmental websites in the coming days. The Centre has sent an alert to several state and governmental wings about the issue. In the midst of all the chaos, the Centre also made it clear that the Indian government websites are regularly “updated” and is “capable” to handle such threats from malicious hackers. 

The threat was detected by the Cyber Threat Intelligence wing of the I4C. The wing stated that the “Hacktivist Indonesia” group has been involved in an illegal operation to hack Indian websites as well as those in some foreign countries as well. The alarm was raised by the wing on Thursday. "A group named 'Hacktivist Indonesia' has been targetting India, and it has created a narrative that it will attack 12,0000 Indian government websites that include Central and those linked to States," a source told ANI, citing the governmental alert. The source also stated that  “it is, however, not necessarily whether the group belongs to Indonesia ''. The Thursday input was first shared with the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, which is a nodal agency of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

The group might have links with Malaysia

The source said Hacktivist Indonesia might have links with “Malaysia” or other sets of “Islamic countries”. "The hacktivist group can also attack China or Ukraine. They also attack different countries," the source told the news outlet. "The 'Hacktivist Indonesia’ has been attacking not only Indian websites but also the websites of other countries. They have circulated a list of 12,000 Indian government websites which they want to target. I4C  unit through its open source intelligence alerted the Cert. In about such ongoing activities, suggesting to be aware,” the source added. 

A cyber expert from the Ministry of Home Affairs asserted that such narratives have been doing rounds since last year. "Such hackers attack government websites and try to slow down these websites using different means. However, government websites are updated. This is not a new thing. Last year too, similar attempts were made by such hackers to attack several websites in Gujarat. The hackers try to send heavy internet traffic to slow down the websites so that users get affected and they could not access or connect online services and sites," the cyber expert said. "The hackers used to check government websites through Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack which is a cybercrime in which the attacker floods a server with internet traffic to prevent users from accessing connected online services and sites,” the expert added.