Just a day before the Finance Minister Anam Ramnarayan Reddy is to present the State Budget in the Legislative Assembly, cyber criminals managed to break into the Government servers and hack the website which gives details of the budget. The hacker added an additional page on the site with URL - http://budget.ap.gov.in/Dz.htm.
This is one of the twenty one websites of Andhra Pradesh government that have been hacked on Thursday exposing severe chinks in the cyber security.
Interestingly, the hackers did not deface the home pages of these different departmental websites but added additional pages with their messages indicating cyber intruders were not radical hackers who would steal the information or do other mischief, but those who just wanted to prove their capabilities.
The hackers identified themselves as !-Bb0yH4cK3r_Dz-! and Hmei7.
The hacked websites belonged to major government departments such as Gazette notifications, government orders, commercial taxes, GAD, horticulture, factories, remote and interior area development, etc.
While one hacker !-Bb0yH4cK3r_Dz-! added the page with URL extension of /Dz.htm the other Hmei7 added the extension /.x.htm to the original URLs.
Melly Maitreyi adds
‘Hacked website does not have new budget data’
The State Government allayed apprehensions that the hacking of various websites including that which gives details of the budget, will undermine the data of the budget for 2012-13.
The Finance Department officials said that the website with url http://budget.ap.gov.in that was hacked, did not contain the details of the present budget which would be kept confidential till presented to the Legislative Assembly and Council on February 17.
"We do not place details of the budget to be presented in that website and when these are posted it will be done in a secured environment", the official added.
Lot of Indian sites has been hacked. India should care about the Cyber Security. Recently,Bangladesh hackers break into lot of Indian websites)
We do not place details of the budget to be presented in that website and when these are posted it will be done in a secured environment", the official added.
Is this making any sense just let me know if you are not able to provide or it is shameful to say what so ever they are doing if they are not doing it securely then a govt site is nothing but a social networking site for those netizens who know where and how to get in those zones.
Please consider this incident as a lesson and get ready to tackle such situations in future..Also please give oppurtunity to the talented to protect the Govt data by providing them jobs rather than recruiting someone based on the bribe they pay or the reservations they have.Many of talented Indians are not getting jobs which they are really good at because of the two reasons and they are finding the ways to use their knowledge to other countries who are acknowledging their talents.
I worked in AP Govt from 1996-2005 in different IT roles. I know how IT in AP functions and Every one repsonsible to safegurad these sites in Govt staff must be suspended including IT Minister and IT Secretrary. Its shame on AP govt, because 70% of IT Labor/force in USA are from AP who works on Websites/web servers in USA and never heard any such incident here.
No need to cry foul for this incident. India always needs a test and then learns from the test. Terrorist attack leads to beefing up of security. Fire at an institution leads to implementing regulatory complaince and audits. Bank robbery leads to all banks having cctv. So this website hacking will be used to srengthen up cyber security. Unfortunately we are poor at being proactive because of our 'chalta hai' atttitude.
If somebody reminds you that you left your house main door open.. that is not a crime. Every weakness will be exploited and that is how it is in this world. Govt should take strict measures of their online infrastructure.
Though the picture suggests that some Muslim might have done it, we should rather find a solution to this hacking activities rather than coming to any conclusion on any religion/community.
Govt should take serious action on this.
It is common in the game of cyber-world.this is a wake up call to those people who feel their websites are safe. It is not only for India but also many countries face such type of vulnerabilities. Only thing we can do is making a common internet protocol globally and each laptop,mobile should have unique ID which gives their full details.
Oh my!! just last week Microsoft India store is hacked. It seems they stored customer Username & PSWD in plain text. And now government websites. This is a wake up call. Before any one intrudes all our government websites leaking more sensitive information to public.
On contrary we are providing IT services all over the world were our services is at pity.
This is really a shock full incident and indicating the weakness of government. How careless is the government. Government shouldn't put important data on web. Hacker is also very astute.By putting " I love You Mohammed" on page they want to foist it to the Muslim hacker.
Why the hackers are doing like this...if this knowledge is used for our country's devolpoment our country would have been in list of devoloped countries..our devoloping nation would have changed into devoloped nation..
It confirms that Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Cert-In and NIC are good for nothing. India is relying on a spent force for protection against cyber threat. They are all bunch of useless babus sucking public money. These organisations responsible for cyber security are directly under the control of Kapil Sibel's Ministry of Communication and Information Technology. INDIA please Get rid of the spent force and inject honest, skilled and hardworking young people on these critical post.
Pls find the website hacking group, and ask him to hack swiss bank
website & network and find the Indian black money investor
Govt needs revamp of website at all levels. Look at the Indian railways
website, it is like a another money mongering website, with cheap pop-
ups!, wont reflect the Govt of India website. I wont be surprised if
such website/hosts do contain virus!.
We have entered into IT world. I am really annoyed to see most of the government sites posing email address from public domain (gmail, hotmail etc).It shows how much we care about IT.Why cannot we "Own" our IT and have separate Servers for specific purpose? Why government agencies do not have a email ID's for their own? How do they believe they can use public email servers. It shows our poor understanding of IT.
Awesome!! And we are planning to give a hell lot of our personal details to the govt as part of UID and expecting them to remain secret!!!
Why can't these Indians be employed against China and Pakistan?
May be the websites are not strong enough to provide security. Definetly the blame goes to the website providers.
Is it necessary to show this photo in your paper. This hacking may or may not be done by muslims, but this this photo will definitely gives a bad image to the muslims. Please be secular.
These are the person with intelligence with destructive mind. It is said that knowledge is dangerous when it is in wrong hands. This is the disadvantage of the technology. Govt. should ensure the security because bits and bytes are no less than bullets .
>"Interestingly, the hackers did not deface the home pages of these different departmental websites but added additional pages with their messages indicating cyber intruders were not radical hackers who would steal the information or do other mischief, but those who just wanted to prove their capabilities."
I think this is an attempt by the hackers (they are not the bad guys) to remind the Govt. on how prepared they are in this new digital era. Hope this action be taken in the right spirit and make the Govt.'s realize the importance of data security and thus strengthen the systems. I do agree that this is a radical approach but when was the last time did we see our Govt.'s act in defence.
Stop making a big deal of "website" hackings.A website merely lists out information.They do not hold "content" as such.Important departments would certainly take care not to link their sensitive data to a web page.
Hacker was not able to defame the homepage. He was just able to create a html file in root folder..
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