199 govt websites defaced in last 6 months: Kamat

The government today said 199 government websites have been defaced by foreign hackers in the last six months.

"The website of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was defaced by a foreign hacker "Pakistan Cyber Army" on December 3, 2010. In addition to this, a total of 198 government websites were defaced by foreign hackers in the past six months," Minister of State for Communications and IT Gurudas Kamat said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

He added that several measures have been taken to detect and prevent cyber attacks .

This includes audit of all new government websites and applications and engaging National Informatics Centre (NIC) to improve safety posture etc.

Replying to another query, Kamat said a total of 420 cases were registered under the IT Act 2000 in 2009.

"A total of 217, 288 and 420 cases were registered under IT Act, 2000 during 2007, 2008 and 2009 respectively, thereby showing an increasing trend.

A total of 339, 176 and 276 cases were reported under cyber-crime related sections of IPC during 2007, 2008 and 2009, respectively," he said.

A total of 2,565, 8,266 and 10,315 security incidents were reported to and handled by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) in 2008, 2009 and 2010, respectively he added.