MHA Website becomes Non-Functional, Hacking not the Cause Claim Officials

The Indian central Ministry of Home Affairs' (MHA) website became inaccessible on February 12 a Sunday with authorities stating that Internet specialists were working towards determining whether the site had fallen to hackers' attack.

The top web-page of the site showed blank while the website itself that hundreds of people visit everyday as also which consists of the ministry's non-sensitive documents along with the same kind of docs of central paramilitary wing, ministry officials' contact details and visa-related information had gotten non-functional. Business-standard.com posted this, February 13, 2017.

Previously according to the spokesperson, the website hadn't been hacked because it was still in its construction phase. The agency maintaining the website is NIC (National Informatics Commission).

Senior officials of the MHA with whom India Today the fortnightly magazine spoke regarding the alleged intrusion into the website stated that the website was not functioning since February 12. While NIC was making efforts towards discovering the cause, the ministry wasn't certain that the Internet site had been hacked. The officials added that while NIC continued its investigation, the site had been taken offline.

The officials further stated that in reality an issue with the database had occurred, which happened occasionally. Web-surfers were under the notion that somebody had hacked the website. While an auditing of the site had been done, there was no trace of malevolent operation. Thus, the green signal had been given for releasing the website.

According to one official, CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) was examining the incident. Spokesperson of the Ministry stated that there were some technical problems with the MHA site that as per the NIC would get corrected same day late evening.

In January 2017, suspected criminals affiliated to Pakistan had invaded the high status NSG's (National Security Guard) authorized website while defaced it via overwriting one message that said against India along with the country's Prime Minister.

Writing one report to Indian Parliament's Lok Sabha, the Ministry had stated that over 700 websites belonging to different departments of the union and state governments had fallen to hackers' attacks during 2013-16, with 8,348 individuals in all arrested for being involved with cyber-crime.

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