Official websites under attack

NEW DELHI: Remote, injection, authorisation bypass and Cult of the Dead Cow are terms that, one would imagine, keep the ministry of health awake.

But these are elements that have turned into a nightmare for government departments from the railways to Trai to Customs.

Website hacking, especially of official government sites, has attained critical mass in India, and the Centre is donning the riot gear.

The last few months have seen hackers successfully attack the websites of telecom regulator Trai, Indian Railways, department of telecom, Air Cargo Customs, National Institute of Social Defence, Forward Markets Commission, National Institute of Health and Family Welfare and BSNL among others.

Ironically, the hackers even disfigured the website of department of information technology (DIT), which is the nodal agency for solving the hacking problem.

Hackers have also crashed into the website of the wireless planning and coordination wing of the department of telecom (DoT), which handles the sensitive issue of spectrum allocation.

In a bid to stem the tide, DIT said it is in the process of hosting the servers of all key ministries itself.