Bengaluru: In the first five months of 2019, at least three websites in India were hacked every hour, compared to two every hour in 2018.

According to data accessed from the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), nearly 11,000 websites were hacked between January and May 2019, at the rate of 72 every day, which is 50% more than 48 hacks reported per day in the previous year.

Cyber expert Mirza Faizan Asad, said: “I believe that these are only those cases were complaints have reached the Centre. There are scores of hacks reported every day in India, and in most cases, the internal technical teams find the hack and implement corrective measures almost immediately.”

He said that more than 60% of these reported hacks could be just defacements, while less than 10% would be serious hacks that managed to steal data. “The fact that most websites do not maintain critical data on them is good. But the cybercriminals have been very active in the past few months, eager to prove themselves to their own community,” another expert said.

Data from January 2016 to May 2019 shows that more than 91,000 websites were hacked in India, at an average of about 73 hacks every day, which is more in line with the average reported in 2019 so far.

Government Websites

Separate data shows that of the 91,000-odd websites hacked in the three plus years, 506 belonged to the Centre, state governments or departments under them. Of the 506, 25 were hacked in the first five months of 2019.

Just last week, Karnataka government was forced to take down its procurement portal — an online platform used to float and award government tenders — because of a cyberattack. While the site is yet to come back live, Sunil Panwar, CEO of e-governance, said that the breach was limited and only affected the refund section of the portal.

“In tune with the dynamic nature of Information Technology and emerging cyber threats, continuous efforts are required to be made by owners to protect networks by way of hardening and deploying appropriate security controls,” CERT-In says.

