NEW DELHI: India's premier policing agency Central Bureau of Investigation was left red faced after cyber hackers claiming to be Pakistanis attacked the organisation's website and pasted a mocking message warning India not to target Pakistan's internet entities.
The CBI website was targeted on Friday night and the agency was looking to secure itself from such cyber warfare while registering cases. Various sections of the cyber law have been invoked even as officials said internal mails and website will also undergo a revamp.
The hackers identified themselves as Pakistani Cyber Army and inserted a message on CBI's home page warning the "Indian Cyber Army" not to attack their websites. The cyber crime cell is still investigating the location from where the attacks were launched which is not clear. Help from other cyber experts is also being sought.
By infiltrating the CBI website, hackers sent across the message to the Indian secuirty establishment that it might face a greater threat apart from the humiliating but relatively innocuous defacing of the agency website. The CBI is connected to the command centre of Interpol and though its internal communications are quite secure, it needs to be careful.
The hackers also spoke about attacking other National Informatics Centre (NIC) managed sites. NIC has been under attack previously by Chinese hackers operating in a ring that came to be known as "son of ghostnet" and the infiltration even hit the external computers in cabinet secretariat and PMO even though the intranet remained untouched.
During the Commonwealth Games, the main website and even the results and scoring systems were subjected to hundreds of cyberattacks from Pakistani and Chinese hackers. The ghostnet investigation had revealed a wide network that included technology students at Chinese engineering schools.
The CBI's website was also hosted by NIC's server while it was being internally managed and monitored by the agency itself. Intelligence agencies have warned of lack of cyber security in government offices and that no security audit was being carried out.
The Pakistani Cyber Army has also warned that it would carry out mass defacement of other websites. CBI spokesperson Vinita Thakur said, "We have registered a case and the investigations are on. The website will soon be restored for public interface."
Officials also said necessary remedial measures to restore the website are being taken. The agency claims that though hackers managed to breach the website and might have taken away some information there was nothing classified as the website is used for public interface.
This is the second such attempt from Pakistan to tarnish the image of CBI. The first case was reported in September, and investigators suspect the two cases could be related.
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