Cyber War-Where does India Stand?

The Hacked CBI Website

The website of the Central Bureau of Investigation, India’s premier investigation agency was hacked by the Pakistan Cyber Army. The website had the message from the PCA that this was being done to avenge the hacking of Pakistan government websites by the Indian Cyber Army.
The message on the CBI website also mock the agency for the lack of security and also questioned the manner in which the National Informatics Centre had put in place the security to safeguard government websites.
Immediate measures have been taken to rectify the problem since the website of the CBI is not only connected to all police stations in the country, but also directly linked to the Interpol. There is heavy damage control exercise which is on at the moment since there is crucial data on this website. The data contains records of wanted criminals and terrorists and this information is linked with the Interpol.
The attack comes close on the heels of a major warning by intelligence agencies that Indian government websites will come under severe attack by Pakistan based hackers. The IB had warned that Pakistan would launch a major cyber war and this could be a continous process and immediate steps had to be taken to secure our servers and websites.
The Pakistan Cyber Army which is the most lethal of the three Pakistan based hacking groups claims to have come into force after their websites were hacked. They say that the Indians had hacked into Oil and Gas Regulatory website in Pakistan. In an immediate retort they hacked into the website of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation.
India has been trying to put in place its own set of hackers. The core job of this group would not be to hack into websites of other countries, but to secure hackers from other countries from entering into our sites.
Currently India has a set of hackers who have capabilities, but the problem is that there is a need for a government clearance to get them to do the job legally. The advantage that a PCA has is that they enjoy the support of security agencies and hence they appear to be in a stronger position today. The IB says that it is not sufficient to rely on the government machinery, but experts from the private sector need to be brought in to secure Indian websites.
Experts point out that there is a need to put in place a dedicated cyber army to protect India’s websites. We have seen many attacks in the past and we should consider ourselves lucky that no serious damage has been done as yet. At the moment they only want to show that our system is weak and it is more of a game for them.