http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1570499,0035.htm Mayank Tewari New Delhi December 10, 2005 The battle is virtual and is as good as a real one. It's a fight to prove how powerful a hacker can be when it comes to breaking into secure Indian websites and servers. In one corner of the ring stands the group of international hacker with names like CyberLord, fatal error and Suicide Scene. In the opposite corner stands the Indian security establishment with a bunch of unnamed patriotic hackers who scout the web for any new activity and alert the government. In the last week of November, international hackers defaced some 230 Indian sites -having domain names ending with .in. A week later more than 1000 Linux based web servers were hacked ain a single attack by international hackers. Over 250 of these servers were located in India. In the month of August, the websites of four IITs - Mumbai, Guwahati, Kharagpur and Chennai - were hacked and defaced by a group of Pakistani hackers who call themselves the Jubni team. The hackers claimed that some of the members of the group are Majeed, Jubni, Zohaib, Pak Brain, Mian Walian and Ch33ta. The ire of the group was directed towards India, USA and Israel. The beginning of September sounded alarm bells for the security agencies. A friendly hacker emailed senior government officials about a Pakistani hackers. plan to deface all defence websites on September 5 - the day the 1965 war broke out. The warning was received on September 2 and all defence websites were made more secure. Three days later, there were repeated attempts to break into our servers but the timely tip off saved the day. Sources in the government informed that it is common for hackers to supply intelligence to the Indian government. "There is a network of hackers where information about a lot events and Internet incidents is exchanged. We could be forewarned about a worm being propagated in some part of the world that may hit Indian servers soon. Based on the input we device patches and post them on our sites for everyone else to download and use. This impact of any cyber attack is thus neutralised to a great extent," said a government source. The website in question is www.cert-in.org.in. However not everyone pays heed to such security advisories. The CERT had issued an advisory in August 2005 about the Linux attacks that happened last week, but little attention was paid to it. Sources inform that such that awareness levels are so low in India that instead of sending email alerts of expected hacker attacks typed letters are sent out to various states informing them to heighten web security and in the wake of such intelligence. "It is to our credit that despite all of these drawbacks we are able to fight international hackers very well," said a government source. The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) also shares intelligence with similar bodies of other countries and is able to generate timely inputs. _________________________________________ Earn your Master's degree in Information Security ONLINE www.msia.norwich.edu/csi Study IA management practices and the latest infosec issues. Norwich University is an NSA Center of Excellence.
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