9 govt websites defaced

Nine official websites including that of the Power Ministry, Maharashtra, Kerala and Uttarakhand governments were defaced in the recent past, forcing the authorities to strengthen cyber security safeguards.

The websites www.kumbh2010haridwar.gov.in, Home: Environment Protection and Pollution Control Board , Government Of Uttarakhand, India, www.gov.ua.nic.in/ujn, IIS7, www.arunachal.nic.in, BEE - Bureau of Energy Efficiency, www.civilsupplieskerala.gov.in, Maharashtra Pollution Control Board and Informatics were defaced, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) under the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said in an RTI reply.

"A number of hacking attempts are made on daily basis on governments websites hosted on NICNET servers. It is not possible to accurately quantify these. The attempts are usually effectively blocked by security controls put in place," it said.

The Ministry was asked to give details of hacking attempts being made on the governments websites in the last ten years (2001-11) along with the names of Uniform Resource Locater (URL) of the portals and source of such attacks.

However, the NIC said that "no such compilation is available" on the URL or name of the portals which were victims of cyber attacks.

"Source of an attempt is mostly traced through Internet protocol (IP) numbers making these attacks. However, the IP number may not be correct country since usually attacker attempt to masquerade their origin," the NIC said in reply to an RTI query filed by PTI.