The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) observed over 6.07 lakh cyber security incidents in the first six months of 2021, of which about 12,000 incidents were related to government organisations, the government informed the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
According to data from CERT-In, which is mandated to track and monitor cyber security incidents in the country, a total of 6,07,220 cyber security incidents were observed during 2021 up to June. This number stood at 2,08,456 in the year 2018; 3,94,499 in 2019; and 11,58,208 in 2020.
The data was shared by Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.
“There have been attempts from time to time to launch cyber-attacks on Indian cyberspace. It has been observed that attackers are compromising computer systems located in different parts of the world and use masquerading techniques and hidden servers to hide the identity of actual systems from which the attacks are being launched,” Mr. Chandrasekhar said.
He added that according to the logs analysed and made available to CERT-In, the IP addresses of the computers from where the attacks appear to have originated belong to various countries, including Algeria, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Netherlands, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, the U.S., and Vietnam.
The total number of cyber security incidents includes hacking of 15,651 Indian websites in 2021 (up to June). This number stood at 17,560 during the year 2018; 24,768 during 2019; and 26,121 during 2020. Likewise, a total number of 70,798, 85,797, 54,314 and 12,001 cyber security incidents were related to government organisations during the years 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 (up to June), respectively.
