BJP website still not up

It has been more than a fortnight since the BJP's official website has been non-functional, apparently after being targeted by hackers.

While the BJP shrugged it off as a small issue, cyber security experts believe the delay in bringing the website back online could be because of the amount of data loss the party suffered in the hacker attack.

The BJP website was hacked on March 5, when the homepage of the website showed a meme of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The website was taken down after that and it displays a message saying that the party is carrying out maintenance work and that the website will be back soon.

Though no hacker group claimed responsibility for the attack, Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had earlier said the website was hacked only for a few minutes.

Mukesh Choudhary, Founder-CEO of Cyberops Infosec and cyber security expert, said the BJP must be taking time to make its website available again to ensure that it should not be hacked again.

Since the election is coming, hackers are certainly on the prowl to target party websites, and the BJP may be treading cautiously to avoid facing yet another embarrassment, Choudhary said.

A text message to BJP IT Cell head Amit Malaviya seeking comments on the non-functional website was not responded to.

The Congress lost no chance at trolling the BJP and even offered help to restore it.

Sources in the saffron party said they were using this break as an opportunity to overhaul the website, which has been pending for the past few months.

Another cyber security expert Amit Malhotra said the website should have been restored within a day or two after the cyber attack depending on the nature of the attack.

Harm should be known to the system or web application depending on the nature of attack, he said.

The time taken to restore the website will depend on how much data has been lost and whether the server that hosted it was located in the country or in a foreign land, Malhotra said.