Fifty Indian Government websites were hacked in 2022, according to Ashwini Vaishnaw, the country’s union Minister for Communications, Electronics, And Information Technology.
The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) – an office within the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology – reported that 59, 42 and 50 central and State Government websites were hacked in 2020, 2021, and 2022 respectively.
Speaking before the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of India’s parliament), Shri Vaishnaw said that CERT-In had identified and headed off 283,581 malicious scams in 2020, 432,057 scams in 2021, and 324,620 scams in 2022.
He said information reported to and tracked by CERT-In showed that there were six data breach incidents observed in 2020, seven in 2021, and eight in 2022, all of which related to Government organisations.
“There have been attempts from time to time to launch cyber-attacks on Indian cyberspace from both outside and within the country,” Shri Vaishnaw said.
“It has been observed that such attacks compromised computer systems located in different parts of the world and use masquerading techniques and hidden servers to hide the identity of actual systems from which the attacks are launched.”
He said that when a Government organisation was the target of a cyberattack, CERT-In informs the organisation of the incident and advises what to do in response.
New Delhi, 9 February 2023
