In January to June 2010 more than 4300 Indian Websites Hacked - spamfighter.com - 13 Aug 2010

The study of information accumulated by CERT-In, a government organization which looks after and addresses computer security in India, disclosed that more than 4300 websites have been hacked during January to June, 2010.

This shows a surge of over 100% in the hacking of Indian websites, as compared to the first six months of 2009, in which around 2118 websites had been hacked.

In addition to this, Bot infected computers are increasing in India. CERT.In discovered 39,600 bot infected systems in India, in the year 2010. Simultaneously, the organization has suggested the related ISPs to take action to disinfect the bot infected computers.

The study also revealed that SQL Injection is the most preferred attacks of the hackers. SQL injection is a kind of attack in which hackers infuse malicious code into authentic websites by taking the advantage of the discrepancies in the database row of an application. The malicious code is being downloaded on a user's computer, whenever he visits this kind of a website.

In the year 2010, a malicious software infected Punjab National Bank's (PNB) website, bringing about damage to a large number of customers' computers, who clicked on a particular hyperlink printed at the bottom of the homepage (www.pnbindia.com). The malicious code was recognized as VirTool: WinNT/Rootkit.BV and TrojanDownloader: Win32/Bredolab.X. In 12th January, 2010, PNB removed the virus, after getting informed by Net-Square (an IT security company, based in Ahmadabad).

In a latest incident during April, 2010, Chinese hackers twice attacked the website of Indian Embassy. The indianembassy.ru website in the public domain was altered to a point that e-mail IDs of the senior officers were duplicated in the .com or gmail domains to distribute thte malware. For instance, for the authentic 'infowing@ indianembassy.ru', IDs such as 'infowing@indianembassy. com' and 'infowing@gmail.com' were applied to distribute spam along malware.

It is reported that, in reply of the cyber threats, Indian has determined to take some steps regarding the protection of significant and strategic computer systems and computer resources. India is on the way to creating a layout for launching counter cyber attack on hostile countries.