Cyber attack on Independence Day eve rattles many in city

The defacement mirror of one of the affected websites showed the abusive message “on behalf of 21 crore Pakistanis” and warned of “the worse face of cyber attack” in future by leaking details of credit cards of Indians.

Chanakyan,a private firm that looks after Higher and Technical Education Minister Rajesh Tope’s website,confirmed the cyber attack. “The website was breached and defaced by hackers despite best possible anti-hacking measures in place. We restored the website immediately after we discovered it had been hacked,” Hemant Patil of Chanakyan told Newsline on Friday.

While Tope could not be contacted for his comment,his personal assistant Vaibhav Kale expressed shock over the incident.

Janwani’s Sneha Jajoo too confirmed the attack on their official website (janwani.org). “The attack was unexpected. We have lodged a formal complaint with the Cyber Cell of Pune police,” she said.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Economic Offences Wing and Cyber Cell) Sanjay Shinde said he was yet to gather details on Janwani’s complaints and the cyber attack on the website of the Pune Traffic Police.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Vishwas Pandhare said he was unaware of any such incident.

Rohit Srivastava,an ethical hacker and founder of “Club-hack”,described the August 14 cyber attacks as acts of mischief that go by the jargon “Kids Play” in world of Internet. “These types of attacks are more like acts of mischief. These are different from ‘cyber wars’ wherein major damage is intended to websites and data uploaded on it. Many websites in India face such cyber attacks every year on important occasions like Independence Day,” he said.