21,467 Indian websites were hacked in Jan-Oct period, show CERT-In data

Minister of State of Electronics and IT, there have been attempts from time to time to launch cyber attacks on Indian cyber space

Over 21,400 Indian websites were hacked this year up to October, Parliament was informed on Wednesday.

"As per the information reported to and tracked by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), a total number of 33,147, 30,067, 17,560 and 21,467 Indian websites were hacked during the year 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 (till October), respectively," Minister of State for Electronics and IT Sanjay Dhotre said in a written reply to Lok Sabha.

He added that there have been attempts from time to time to launch cyber attacks on Indian cyber space.

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, he said.

"According to the logs analyzed and made available to CERT-In, the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the computers from where the attacks appear to be originated belong to various countries including China, Pakistan, Netherlands, France, Taiwan, Tunisia, Russia, Algeria and Serbia," Dhotre said.

In response to a separate query, Dhotre said a total of 4,192 and 3,847 complaints for blocking of URLs under certain provisions of section 69A of the IT Act were received by the IT Ministry during the year 2018 and 2019 (till August), respectively.

"Government has taken appropriate action for blocking of URLs following the norms prescribed in the rules notified under section 69A of the Act," he said.

The minister noted that Section 69A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000 empowers government to block any information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in any computer resource in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign states or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence relating to above.