Indian cybersecurity alert: 'Hacktivist Indonesia' targeting 12,000 government websites

A group named "Hactivist Indonesia" has claimed to have issued a list of 12,000 Indian government websites, including Central and States, which it may attack in the coming days, an alert circulated by the Ministry of Home Affairs' Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) points.

However, Indian government websites are "updated" and "capable" to handle such threats and narratives being spread by ill elements possibly operating within or outside the country, the alert has been circulated to all agencies, Central and State government wings.

Issued on Thursday, the alert was circulated by the I4C based on the inputs received by its Cyber Threat Intelligence wing following its open-source intelligence. The narrative was detected by the Cyber Threat Intelligence wing of I4C about the 'Hacktivist Indonesia' group which has been involved in an illegal operation to hack Indian websites as well as those in some foreign countries too.

The input was first shared with the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert.In), a nodal agency under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, who had requested to share the information with the nodal cyber-crime units in the States about the "potential threat".

"A group named 'Hacktivist Indonesia' has been targeting India, and it has created a narrative that it will attack 12,000 Indian government websites that include Central and those linked to States," said sources citing the alert circulated, adding "it is, however, not necessarily whether the group belongs to Indonesia."

"The hacktivist group can also attack China or Ukraine. They also attack different countries," said the source, pointing "people from different countries are attacking in the ongoing illegal cyber operation and 'Hacktivist Indonesia' is among those group planning attack by using means of open source".

"The 'Hacktivist Indonesia' has been attacking not only Indian websites but also the websites of other countries. They have circulated a list of 12,000 Indian government websites which they want to target. The I4C unit through its open source intelligence alerted the Cert.In about such ongoing activities, suggesting to be aware."

As per cyber experts in MHA, "this narrative has been going on since last year".

"Such hackers attack government websites and try to slow down these websites using different means. However, government websites are updated. This is not a new thing. Last year too, similar attempts were made by such hackers to attack several websites in Gujarat. The hackers try to send heavy internet traffic to slow down the websites so that users get affected and they could not access or connect to online services and sites," said the experts.

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