Skirmishes between India and Pakistan-based hackers – a blowout of the death penalty awarded to former Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav – continued on Tuesday as the websites of Delhi University, Aligarh Muslim University, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and IT-Banaras Hindu University and 10 other institutions were hacked.
The hacks were reported at 3.30 pm, when hackers belonging 'Pakistan Haxors CREW – PHC' defaced the websites of DU, AMU and IIT-D, with 'Pakistan Zindabad' slogans and pictures of alleged brutalities by the Indian forces in Kashmir.
In retaliation to the Pakistani hack, Indian hackers defaced the official websites of Pakistan Peoples Party, the Finance Department of Pakistan and the country's official anti-tobacco initiative.
The DU website was restored within a few minutes; however, the IIT-D website continued to experience problems late into the evening and was rectified around 6 pm. Officials from AMU had clarified that their main website was not hacked but their internet servers based in Delhi, responsible for providing the domain net server, were compromised.
The messages that the hackers defaced the websites with questioned the Indian armed forces and their conduct in Kashmir. One of the messages blamed the armed forces for various acts of violence against people in Kashmir.
The hackers claimed that the attack was in retaliation to the hacking of major government websites in Pakistan, including their Railways website.
"This hack is in response to Code-Man's hack of railways.gov.pk(http://www.zone-h.org/mirror/id/29230257?zh=1) and in the solidarity of innocent Kashmiri People being killed by Indian Army! Thank you, Regards – PHC (sic)," read the message".
The hacker Code-Man had hacked around 30-40 websites of the Pakistan government, in retaliation to the announcement of death penalty to Jadhav.
The Delhi Police have so far not received any complaint about the incident. "We have been informed about the hack, but so far not received any complaint. If we get a complaint, we will take action according to the due procedure of law," said Madhur Verma, PRO, Delhi Police.
However, cyber security experts believe that triangulating the location of the hacker is extremely difficult and may also send the investigators on a wild goose chase in Pakistan.
Kislay Chaudhary, who routinely advises Delhi Police on cyber-crime related issues, said: "There is no requirement for specialised hacking groups to hack into such websites. This appears to have been initiated by 'script kiddies' (amateur hackers), who just look for vulnerabilities in websites and use pre-defined hacking tools to deface the website."