Times of India reported: Hacker groups based in Islamic nations continued to attack India’s private and government websites, including those from Hyderabad on Monday.
The barrage of cyberattacks spanning over 72 hours now was launched by groups in Malaysia, Yemen, Pakistan and other countries against BJP leader Nupur Sharma’s controversial remarks on the prophet. Hackers defaced several government websites in Delhi and Maharashtra.
Apart from DragonForce Malaysia, hacker groups like D4RK TSN, Zerofault launched a series of attacks, defacing more than 250 websites over three days. Indian intelligence agencies had ignored an alert by cyber security firm Radware on April 19 on possible attack by DragonForce Malaysia. The alert followed breaching of Israeli sites.
Security researcher Sourajeet said, “In past couple of days, several cyberattacks have been launched by hacktivist groups against India, following the Nupur Sharma controversy. At least eight important sites of the government of India were defaced. Data from some government sites were also dumped and are now being circulated over Telegram and other social media platforms. A hacktivist group, DragonForce Malaysia, also launched a series of DDOS attack. Another infamous hacktivist group, Yemen Cyber Army claimed to have defaced over 1,200 Indian sites. Most of these sites belong to private bodies and are vulnerable. A hacker group, Team Revolution-Pakistan, compromised the live news streaming service of certain India Youtube channels too.”
He said attempts are also being made to compromise social media accounts of Indian organisations, citizens and famous personalities through phishing and other social engineering techniques. “There is an urgent need to get these sites fixed. If you’re a site owner, get it pen-tested to ensure it’s safe,” he said.