India-Pak acrimony escalates in cyber world

The Central Bureau of Investigation’s official website – www.cbi.nic.in – has been hacked by people, which identified themselves as ‘Pakistani Cyber Army’ and claimed that it was in retaliation for a similar attack by its counterparts in India.

According to media reports in Pakistan, ‘Indian Cyber Army’ hacked a number of websites of the neighbouring country earlier this week to avenge the 26/11 attacks and to mark the second anniversary of the carnage in Mumbai.

The website of Pakistan’s Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority has also been hacked on Saturday and the hackers identifying themselves as Indian Cyber Army claimed that it was a retaliatory move in the wake of the attack on the CBI website.

Case lodged

The CBI on Saturday registered a case against unknown people under various sections of the Information Technology Act 2000. The agency also launched efforts to restore the website at the earliest. “It has come to the notice of the CBI that its official website was accessed in an unauthorised way and was defaced in the intervening night of December 3 and 4,” the investigating agency said in a brief statement.

“A case has been registered in this connection in the cyber crime cell of the CBI and efforts are under way to restore the website with the help of National Informatics Centre and the CBI cyber security experts,” said the agency’s spokesman.

The Section 70 of the IT Act, 2000 and Section 463 of the Indian Penal Code provides for maximum imprisonment of 10 years and fine.

The home page of the CBI website – supposed to be one of the most secured in India – was hacked and it had a message from the ‘Pakistani Cyber Army’ warning the ‘Indian Cyber Army’ against attacking the neighbouring country in the cyber world. They also threatened to carry out ‘mass defacement’ of other website of India.

A hacker introducing himself as HEX786 sent a message to Pakistan newspaper “The Express Tribune” owning up the responsibility for the defacement of the CBI website. The HEX786 also claimed that ‘Predator PK’ – apparently another name of the Pakistani Cyber Army – had also hacked about 200 other websites of colleges, NGOs, corporate houses and religious organisations of India.

The Pakistani hacker even owned up the responsibility for the attack on the BJP website. The BJP had in fact on September 27 last served a legal notice to the ruling Congress after it had found that its website www.bjp.com had in fact been taking the visitors to a website of the All India Congress Committee.

It is however not yet clear if the HEX786 was referring to that particular incident involving the BJP website.

“This is Just A Warning To All Script Kiddies Indians Hackers… Your Security Was good But We Like Breaking it!” read the message posted by the HEX786 on the website of “The Express Tribune”.

The hackers, who defaced the website of Pakistan’s Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority – www.ogra.org.pk – on Saturday, purportedly left a message that read: “You Have Been Hacked By The Indian Cyber Army. This Is a Retaliation Of Hacking CBI”.

Pakistani media reports blamed the Indian Cyber Army of hacking 36 government websites of that country earlier this week.