Ministry of Home affairs website goes offline amid hacking reports

National Informatics Centre took it offline after some 'abnormal technical activities' were observed

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The official website of Ministry of Home Affairs went offline today amid reports that it had been hacked.

Official sources said National Informatics Centre (NIC), which looks after all government websites, took it offline in the wee hours today after some "abnormal technical activities" were observed.

Official sources said NIC would host the website soon after a recheck of all security features.

Last month, suspected Pakistan-linked operatives had hacked the official website of the elite National Security Guard (NSG) and defaced it with a profanity-laden message against the Prime Minister and anti-India content. Similar cyber attacks also targeted websites of ordnance factories as well as railways.

More than 700 websites of various central and state government departments have been hacked in the past four years and a total of 8,348 persons were arrested for their involvement in cyber crimes, according to official data released this month.

As per information reported to and tracked by the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN), which works under the IT ministry, as many as 199 websites of central ministries/departments and state governments were hacked in 2016, as against 164 in 2015, 155 in 2014 and 189 in 2013.

The government has already initiated several policy, legal and technical measures such as audit of the systems and networks, increasing awareness in area of cyber security, sharing threat-related information with stakeholders, issuing advisories on such threats through CERT-IN and National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) to address the issue of cyber hacking.