Defence, Law and Home Ministry websites down

NEW DELHI: The websites of the defence ministry, home and law ministries crashed on Friday evening around the same time, which raised s that these had been hacked. But a top cybersecurity official emphatically denied any hacking and blamed the snag on a hardware problem.

First, the defence ministry's official site started leading to an error page and had a Chinese symbol thought to mean "Not early". Moments later, the home and law ministry websites were down.

"The site is currently not available because of technical problems. Please try again later. Thank you for understanding," said a message on the home website, informing that the site was offline. It was initially thought to be a case of hacking, especially after a tweet from Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, but a cybersecurity official countered it.

"There is no hacking of any nature anywhere on the Defence Ministry website. There is hardware problem due to which the website is down. It will be up shortly," Gulshan Rai, National Cyber Security Coordinator said. Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman tweeted to say that her ministry's website will be restored shortly.

"Action is initiated after the hacking of MoD website. The website shall be restored shortly. Every possible step required to prevent any such eventuality in the future will be taken," she tweeted.

Sources said the National Informatics Centre, which maintains all government websites, was asked to investigate.

The ministry's suspicion was linked to the IAF announcing that it is holding some of its largest-ever war games specifically designed to deal with the simultaneous threat posed by the Pakistani and Chinese Air Forces. The glitch also comes on a day the government - in fact on another part of the Defence Ministry website - officially released the Request for Information (RFI) for more than 100 new fighter jets in a deal eventually expected to cost upwards of Rs 100,000 crores.