Cyber security chief says it's due to hardware failure; some officials say they saw Chinese characters on the Defence Ministry site.

The Defence Ministry’s website, along with those of the Ministries of Home, Law and Labour, went down on Friday evening.

Raising the spectre of a possible Chinese hacking attack, some officials said they saw some Chinese characters on the Defence Ministry site. However, there was no technical confirmation.

Gulshan Rai, cyber security advisor to the Prime Minister, told The Hindu, “Yes, there has been a problem, but it is due to a hardware failure in the storage system of the NIC [National Informatics Centre] network that has caused some of the sites to develop a problem. But there is absolutely no hacking of any nature from anywhere.”

He also said, “hardware is being replaced and the system is being reset and we expect to have it back up quite soon.”

Minister's statement

Defence Minister Nirmal Sitharaman, however, said on her official Twitter handle, “Action is initiated after the hacking of MOD website [http://mod.nic.in]. The website shall be restored shortly. Needless to say, every possible step required to prevent any such eventuality in the future will be taken.”

A Defence Ministry spokesperson said the NIC was trying to restore the website.