The Hindu Business Line : Sharp rise in defacement of Indian Web sites

THE reported incidents of defacement of Indian Web sites in popular domains, such as .com, rose sharply to 796 in August 2005 compared with 261 incidents tracked in the previous month, according to Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).

The latest data take the total number of Web defacement cases tracked in the first eight months of the current calendar year (January-August) to 2,748. The number of hacking attempts registered by CERT-In during August comes close to the year's high of 798 cases recorded during January, this year. Compared year-on-year, the defacements incidents in August 2005 were more than double the number of cases reported in the same period previous year (342 cases).

Web site defacement, a form of malicious hacking, involves "vandalisation" of a Web site. Often the malicious hacker replaces the site's normal content with a specific political or social message or erases the content from the site entirely, relying on known security vulnerabilities for access to the site's content. This is done by taking advantage of new or common, exploitable security holes in Web-server technology — the software that stores and sends Web pages back to the Web-browser.

Of the total cases reported in August 2005, the bulk of defacements occurred in popular .com domain. About 614 defacements were tracked in the .com domain during the month against 193 in the previous month. As many as 69 cases pertained to .org domain, 47 to .net domain and 28 to .co.in domains. Defacements in other domains such as .info, .ernet.in, .gov.in, .org.in, .ac.in and .firm.in were marginal.

CERT-In, which records this data, was constituted in January last year to tackle any possible hacking or virus attacks on the information systems including the country's vital networks such as power, railways, aviation and defence - and provides reactive and proactive services to enhance cyber security in India.

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