Over 8,000 website hacked from Jan-March 2016: Government

The Parliament was informed on Wednesday than more than 8,000 incidents of website hacking have been reported in the first three months of 2016.

In a written reply to Lok Sabha's question, Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the total number of "cyber security incidents including phishing, scanning, malicious code, website intrusion, denial of service" stood at 41,319, 44,679, 49,455 and 14,363, during the years 2013, 201, 2015 and 2016 (till March), respectively.

Citing information reported to and tracked by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the Minister further said these cyber security incidents included 28,481, 32,323, 27,205 and 8,056 website hacking incidents during 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 (till March), respectively.

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"In addition, 54,677, 85,659, 61,628 and 13,851 spam (unsolicited email) incidents were reported to CERT-In during the year 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 (till March), respectively," Prasad said.

Over a period, the nature and pattern of incidents have become more sophisticated and complex, he added.

"The National Cyber Security Policy is released for public use and implementation by relevant stakeholders. The objective of the policy is to create a framework for comprehensive, collaborative and collective response to deal with the issue of cyber security at all levels within the country," he said.

In addition, the government has formulated cyber crisis management plan for countering cyber attacks and cyber terrorism for implementation by all ministries/departments of central government, state governments and their organisations and critical sectors, he added.