The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the nodal agency for responding to computer security incidents, has been entrusted the investigation into the alleged hacking of the Supreme Court website, which went down minutes after the court on Thursday delivered its ruling in pleas filed over the death of judge B.H. Loya.
“The SC maintains the website and the CERT is helping them restore the site besides investigating the matter,” a senior government official told THE WEEK.
The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed pleas seeking an independent probe into Loya's death.
Soon after, the government's cybersecurity apparatus went into a tizzy following the incident of the alleged hacking of the website.
The National Informatics Centre, which hosts websites of key Central government ministries and departments, is the backbone of the government’s cyber networks and e-governance platforms.
Even as government sources tried to play down the hacking incident, saying that the SC website is maintained by the Supreme Court itself, the episode has prompted the National Cyber Security coordinator, Gulshan Rai, to seek a report from CERT-In. CERT-In has meanwhile begun its investigation into the matter. Its report is awaited.
High tech, a Brazilian hacking group, is alleged to have claimed responsibility for the hacking of the SC website, which appears to be part of a global hacking attempt, cyber security experts said. The alleged hacking claims have been put up on a mirroring portal, they said. The experts pointed out that it isn’t the SC website alone but 514 websites worldwide that have allegedly been hacked by this group.
Most of group apparently belong to Argentina, the experts said. The CERT is expected to be looking at these claims during its investigation.
Meanwhile, The SC website isn’t the only one that has gone down. The websites of the ministry of home and law commission of India, besides few others, have also gone down. Government sources said the 'outage' at the home ministry website isn’t a case of “hacking” and it is under maintenance.
Last week, 10 government websites crashed, setting off speculation of organised hacking attempts by inimical elements across the border.
The website of the union ministry of defence, among nine others, had been affected last week and the presence of certain “characters” on the MoD website, which bore some resemblance to Chinese characters, set off speculation of a cyber attack by alleged Chinese hackers.
However, it turned out that the mysterious character was the logo of the Drupal content management system software, used by the websites for managing content. The other websites affected included ministries of home, labour, and civil aviation as well as the Central Vigilance Commission.
“The problem we encountered last week has been solved. It was a hardware failure and it has been restored. This time, the MHA website is under maintenance,” said a government official.
But the fact that the SC website faced an alleged hacking episode, prompting an investigation, is evidence enough of the need to bolster the security of the government's cyber network and infrastructure that appears to be in dire straits now.