Technology Network

      As many as 3,286 websites were attacked in India between January and June 2009, most of them of various government organizations. According to the CERT-In (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team) of the Department of Information Technology, there has been an increase in the attacks on government websites from January 2005 to February 2008.

      "We are aware of the attacks on National Informatics Centre, the IT mainstay of the Indian Government, which was attacked by GhostNet, allegedly by a China based cyber spy ring. In 2008 alone cyber attackers defaced over 4,000 Indian portals out of which 100 were Indian government Sites," said Sridhar Jayanthi, Senior Vice President (Engineering) and Head of Operations - India, McAfee to Indian Express.

      The website easternrailway.gov.in was also hacked recently. "We have also seen hackers turning an Indian Bank website into a malware distributing source recently," he added.

      The attacks have come under the scanner in view of the Virtual Criminology report published by McAfee. "As an initial step the government has set up a National Security Council to prevent cyber attacks," explained Jayanthi. It is the private sectors, experts say, that are more at risk of an attack. "Private sectors in India too need to build a strong defense mechanism as today a majority of their infrastructure is connected to the Internet," he said.