'Continuous attempts being made to hack India's cyber network'

Criminals have made "continuous attempts" to penetrate India's cyber networks and systems from the cyber space of various countries, Parliament was informed today.
The government, however, said as cyber space is virtual and borderless, attempts to trace the origin of the attacks have been difficult.
In a written reply to Lok Sabha, Minister of State of Communications and IT Milind Deora said during the years 2011, 2012 and 2013, a total of 17,306, 23,014 and 24,216 Indian sites, respectively, were defaced by various hacker groups spread across the world.
Besides, 13,301, 22,060 and 71,780 security incidents, which include phishing, spam, scanning, malicious code, website intrusions, etc, were reported by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) during the year 2011, 2012 and 2013, respectively, he added.

"There have been continuous attempts to penetrate Indian cyber networks and systems from the cyber space of a number of countries," the Minister said.
Deora added it has been observed that cyber criminals compromise computer systems located in different parts of the world and use masquerading techniques to hide the identity of actual systems from which the attacks have been launched.

"Cyber space is virtual, borderless and anonymous due to which it becomes difficult to actually trace the origin of a cyber attack," he said.
The government has initiated action to set-up a Cyber Coordination Centre to coordinate with multiple agencies and stakeholders for preventing cyber attacks, reducing vulnerability to cyber attacks and minimising damage and recovery time for such attacks when they occur, Deora said.

The National Cyber Security Policy 2013 envisages creation of a workforce of 500,000 professionals in cyber security in the next five years through capacity building, skill development and training, he added.