[Update] MHA Website Taken Down As a Precautionary Step After Defence Ministry Site Hack Scare

Update: The website of the home ministry has been temporarily taken down as part of extra precautions in the wake of the alleged cyber attack of the defence ministry site, which has now been clarified as a hardware-related glitch by the National Cyber Security Coordinator Gulshan Rai.

Soon after the official website of the Ministry of Defence—mod.gov.in— was supposedly hacked, the website of Ministry of Home Affairs was pulled down. On visiting the MHA website this message is flashed: “The requested service is temporarily unavailable. Sorry for Inconvenience. It would be available soon." Last year, the official website of Ministry of Home Affairs was also reported to be hacked but the MHA officials later denied it and said that the website was down for maintenance.

Visitors to the Defence Ministry website are shown this message: “The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later". Several media reports claimed that the website was hacked by Chinese hackers as it showed a Chinese character which means ‘Zen’ according to Google Translate. "Action is initiated after the hacking of MoD website ( http://mod.nic.in ). The website shall be restored shortly. Needless to say, every possible step required to prevent any such eventuality in the future will be taken," said Nirmala Sitharaman, Defence Minister of India.

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"We are seized of the matter. The National Informatics Centre, which maintains the website, is trying to restore it," a spokesperson in the ministry said. Another official said Chinese hackers may be involved in defacing the website, according to PTI. Previously, the official website of Ministry of Home Affairs was also reported to be hacked but the MHA officials later denied it and said that the website was down for maintenance.

Last year, Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju said in a written reply to Lok Sabha that over 700 websites of various central and state government departments were hacked in the past four years. Of the total of 707, 199 of them were hacked last year, 164 in 2015, 155 in 2014 and 189 in 2013. Rijiju had informed earlier that a total of 8,348 persons were arrested for their involvement in cyber crimes.

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