Over 900 websites defaced in March: Cert-In

NEW DELHI: Hackers had wrecked the country's cyberspace and defaced over 900 websites in March, raising serious concerns of cyber security threats from neighbouring countries.

According to statistics by Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In) which handles computer securities incidents in the country, 901 websites were defaced in March compared to 510 in February this year.

The data came at a time amid reports of Chinese hackers cracking into sensitive Indian government department websites.

Website defacement is a form of malicious hacking. It is usually the substitution of the original home page by a system cracker that breaks into a web server and alters the hosted website creating one of its own.

Often the hacker replaces the site's normal content with a specific political or social message or erases the content from the site.

This week, there have been reports that Chinese hackers have pilfered classified documents from India's defence and diplomatic establishments.

Responding to that earlier this week Telecom Minister A Raja had also welcomed any suggestion that would strengthen cyber laws and enhance online information security.

In March, out of the 901 websites defaced, 590 were with the domain name .in.

The other domains that were defaced includes .com, .in, .org and .net.

In February, the numbers were 510, of which 346 were with doamin name -.in.