Indian Government websites hacked and defaced by Pakistani hackers “Madleets”

Indian Government websites with .nic and .Gov extensions hacked and defaced

Pakistani hackers going with the online handle “Madleets” today hacked and defaced some 22 Indian Government websites, in what they claimed to be the wrongdoings in Indian Kashmir.

The hackers announced on Facebook that the hack has nothing to do with the Cyber war between India and Pakistan

Stamped By 1337 & r00x for our brothers and sisters in Kashmir. We care for Humanity. This has nothing related to cyber war crap. We are not asking for Kashmir. We ask for PEACE !  the hackers said on Facebook.

However the message on deface page blamed Indian Army for wrongdoings in Kashmir which seems to be similar to toeing the official Pakistani Government claim.

Looking at the India’s point of view on the Military posting in Kashmir

Indian Government says Military posting in Kashmir is to protect Kashmir from being terrorized by terrorists and attacks from Pakistan.  The Kashmir dispute has been ongoing since the two countries were partitions by the outgoing colonial masters in 1947.  Since then India and Pakistan have fought 3 major wars and have had minor conflicts over the Pakistans claims on Kashmir.  In the meantime around 4000,000 Kashmiri Pandits belong to the minority Hindu community in the majority Islamic Kashmir have been forced to leave their homeland after targeted attacks on their brethren.

Analysing the Hack 

List of websites hacked and defaced

https://oscw.nic.in/ https://ophwc.nic.in/ https://scpdodisha.nic.in/ https://tgahd.nic.in/ https://tsbocwwboard.nic.in/ https://gssaap-cag.nic.in/ https://apbocwwboard.ap.nic.in/settings.php https://rys.ap.nic.in/ https://apfdc.tg.nic.in/ https://aplwb.ap.nic.in/About https://apfdc.ap.nic.in/ https://agri.tg.nic.in/ https://cdm.telangana.nic.in/ https://bdl.gov.in/Companys-Profile-Company/ https://apbocwwboard.tg.nic.in/ https://dca.tg.nic.in/ https://rys.tg.nic.in/ https://tglwb.tg.nic.in/ https://apfdc.gov.in/ https://labdirodisha.gov.in/ https://pheoodisha.gov.in/ https://wcdodisha.gov.in/

Mirror (web cached version of defacement): https://zone-h.com/archive/published=0/notifier=1337

The Government websites being hacked comes from different Indian Government servers.  The national internet backbone, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) servers were effected. Hacker was able to gain root access to few of its servers . This was confirmed by Madleets to Techworm.  They, however claimed that there exists several vulnerabilities in the NIC servers which can be exploited to gain full control.

All the hacked sites are showing the defaced page at the time writing this article.