New Delhi: A Pro-Pakistan group hacked the official websites of four prominent Indian institutes—Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi), IIT Varanasi, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) and Delhi University (DU)— and some lesser known institutions several times on Tuesday.

While all four educational institutes restored their websites initially, the hackers brought then down again and posted the pro-Pakistan, anti-India messages on these websites.

As of 9.15pm, IIT Varanasi and IIT Delhi websites were showing the hackers’ message. AMU and DU websites had been restored.

The hacker group code named “Pakistan Haxors Crew " wrote abuses about Indian government and the Indian Armed forces on the landing pages of the websites. The hacker group said: “Nothing deleted or stolen. Just here to deliver my message to Indians."

The Pakistan Haxors Crew also said the hack was in response to an Indian hacker hacking that country’s railways website.

Other websites which were hacked Tuesday are University of Kota; Army Institute of Management and Technology, Greater Noida; Defence Institute of Advanced Technology; Army Institute of Management, Kolkata; National Aerospace Laboratories and Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences (BRNS).

“Greetings Government of India, and the people of India. :) Do you know what your so-called heroes (soldiers) are doing in Kashmir? Do you know they are killing many innocent people in Kashmir?" read the message displayed on the websites.

Officials at Delhi University said they were looking into the issue and the website will be restored soon.

IIT Delhi professor Sanjeev Sanghi said it has not lost any data due to the hacking. Sanghi said the “ERNET DNS (domain name service) server for the IIT Delhi website was targeted because of which IIT Delhi’s website was showing those pro-Pakistan messages. Sanghi said IIT Delhi has already in touch with the government over the development.

“The website was inaccessible from outside the campus for some time due to some problems in the domain name. Servers were pointing incorrectly to another site," said DU registrar Tarun Das. “The problem was detected and immediately rectified by contacting ERNET, which has provided the domain name for University of Delhi," he added.

The AMU spokesperson said that the matter has been brought to their notice and their IT department is looking into the issue. IIT-BHU could not be reached immediately.

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