An alarming alert has been circulated by the Ministry of Home Affairs’ Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C). A group named “Hacktivist Indonesia” has claimed they are planning to attack 12,000 Indian government websites, including Central and State, in the upcoming days. The Cyber Threat Intelligence wing of I4C has detected this narrative. The alert was shared with the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert.In) and requested to share the information across all nodal cyber-crime units in the states to be aware of such threats.
“Hacktivist Indonesia” is reportedly not necessarily from Indonesia but could be from Malaysia or other Islamic countries. It has targeted websites other than India as well, circulating a list of 12,000 Indian government websites it wants to target. Moreover, “Hacktivist Indonesia” has been active with similar attempts since last year. It and other hackers have tried to slow down websites with Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, which is a cybercrime.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has informed state governments about the cyber security and how to protect the websites. Additionally, the National Informatics Centre has formulated the Guidelines For Indian Government Websites (GIGW) which aims to ensure the quality and accessibility of government websites. It can detect cyber-attacks, data loss, phishing, and other malfunctions. GIGW 3.0 has been introduced and focuses on offering guidance to government organisations on how to make access to cyberspace more inclusive.
The Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) is responsible for cyber security and countering cybercrime in India. It is a unit of the ministry of Home Affairs, which provides cyber security and focuses on providing intelligence inputs related to cyber crime. It works closely with State Nodal Cyber Crime Units.
The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert.In) is a nodal agency under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. It’s main responsibility is to respond to computer security incidents and provide appropriate advice to the government and its stakeholders in the fields of Information Security.
