5200 websites defaced last year: CERT-In

NEW DELHI: Over 400 Indian websites came under attack by hacker groups during December 2006, compared to 340 sites that were defaced during the previous month.

This takes the total number of websites that were defaced during the full year (2006) to about 5200, according to data by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).

About 37 security incidents were reported to CERT-In from various national and international agencies in December, 2006.

"About 67% phishing incidents were reported in this month; 22% unauthorized scanning incidents and 11% incidents related to virus/worm under the malicious code category, were also reported. As compared to previous month the number of phishing incidents have decreased while virus/worm incidents have increased," it said

Of the total number of sites that were hacked and defaced, an overwhelming majority were in the `.com' domain (303 incidents), while 54 incidents occured within the .in domain. As many as 47 defacement incidents were recorded in the .org domain while the .net and .info domains accounted for 18 and eight incidents, respectively.