Several government websites which fell prey to Brazilian hackers on April 6 have still not been restored.
The website of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council, which has its headquarters in Bangalore, www.naac.gov.in; defence website www.cdarndbblr.gov.in (belonging to the Controller of Defence Accounts, Bangalore); Bharat Earth Movers Limited’s sister site bemltech.nic.in; and Doordarshan website in Bangalore ddchandana.gov.in were among the 18 sites pulled off the servers by the Brazilian hackers with handle “HighTech.”
Even on Monday, most of these websites were not up. They were displaying messages such as “Server Error” or “Site is taken off for maintenance.”
NAAC director H.A. Ranganath told The Hindu that they had alerted the National Informatics Centre (NIC), which provides them IT support, about the hacking attempts and the NIC had taken the site off for maintenance.
“We will try to restore the website as early as possible,” he said adding they were getting inquiries from students anxious to know about the accreditation of institutions they wished to join in the coming admission season.
Doordarshan ADG, Bangalore, Mahesh Joshi, confirmed the hacking of Doordarshan Bangalore’s website. He said the NIC had taken it off for restoration.
When The Hindu contacted the other institutions whose websites were taken off, their representatives said they were discussing the matter with their technical teams and engineers.
Meanwhile, Election Commission officials in Bangalore scotched rumours that the Commission’s website was hacked and data stolen.
