[ISN] Defacement Of Indian Websites On The Rise

[InfoSec News]

http://www.cxotoday.com/cxo/jsp/article.jsp?article_id=2513&cat_id=909

By CXOtoday Staff 
Mumbai
Dec 24, 2004 
 
The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has compiled a
report [1] that speaks on how with the global rise in cyber terrorism
activity, Indian websites too have come under fire by attackers, some
of them being opportunists while others targeting specific sites and
domains.

The report covers defaced Indian websites only .in ccTLD (Indian
country code top level domain). The range of the data obtained for
analysis dates from 1998 to 20 September 2004.

The total .in ccTLD registered domains is 6430 of which a majority
comprises of .co.in domains. A total of 667 defacement records have
been found under the .in ccTLD. The domain .co.in had 242 defacements
which is more than 36% of the total defacements.
 
According to the report, the number of .in ccTLD sites defaced was
highest in the year 2001, when 219 sites were defaced.

However, there has been an increase in the number of .gov.in sites
being defaced every year. From only one site defaced in 1999, it
increased to 43 in 2003. There is likely to be an increase in .gov.in
sites defaced this year too, as 42 .gov.in sites have already been
defaced this year, claims the report.

More than 150 hacker/hacker groups have been responsible for defacing
Indian websites. The group AIC (Anti India Crew) has defaced the most
number of .in ccTLD sites accounting for 15% of the total .in ccTLD
sites defaced.

In terms of the hosting platforms on which .in sites were hosted,
Windows had the highest number of defacements (338) as compared to
Linux at 179.

CERT-In has been set up by the government of India with the objective
of promoting cyber security.

[1] http://www.cert-in.org.in/knowledgebase/whitepapers/analysis_defacewebsites.htm