CERT-In says 15,651 Indian websites hacked till June this year

The attacks appear to have originated in countries including Algeria, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Netherlands, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, US and Vietnam, said Chandrasekhar.

“CERT-In has reported that a total of 2,08,456, 3,94,499, 11,58,208 and 6,07,220 cyber security incidents have been observed during the year 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 (upto June) respectively. Out of this, a total number of 17,560, 24,768, 26,121 and 15,651 Indian websites were hacked during the year 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 (up to June) respectively,” the minister said in a reply to Lok Sabha.

The union government had earlier said that four of India’s five regional load despatch centres (RLDCs) that help oversee the country’s critical electricity load management functions have witnessed cyberattacks. This comes in the backdrop of Red Echo, a hacker group affiliated to the Chinese government, repeatedly targeting India’s power grid earlier this year. Also, there have been reports of targeted intrusion activities directed at India’s transport sector.

“There have been attempts from time to time to launch cyber attacks on Indian cyber space. It has been observed that attackers are compromising computer systems located in different parts of the world and use masquerading techniques and hidden servers to hide the identity of actual systems from which the attacks are being launched,” Chandrasekhar added in his response.

With Chinese hackers targeting India’s critical infrastructure such as power grids, the union power ministry has ordered all organisations under it to use “organisation specific email-id for official communications.”