The Hindu Business Line : 261 Web site vandalisation incidents in July

THE reported incidents of defacement of Indian Web sites in popular domains including `.com' rose to 261 in July, compared to 144 incidents tracked in the previous month, according to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).

Compared year-on-year, the defacement incidents in July 2005 were higher than the 222 cases reported in the same period the previous year.

This takes the total Indian Web site defacement or hacking incidents in the first seven months of the current year (January-July) to 1,952, with January witnessing the maximum Web site vandalisation cases (798).

Web defacement or Web site defacement, is a form of malicious hacking in which a Web site is "vandalised."

Often the malicious hacker replaces the site's normal content with a specific political or social message or erases 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 July 2005, the bulk of defacements occurred in the `.com' domain. As many as 193 defacement were tracked in the popular `.com' domain during the month against 103 defacements reported in June 2005.

While 21 defacements pertained to the `.org' domain, 19 occurred in the `.net' and 12 in `.co.in' domains. Incidents of Web site vandalisation were also reported in other domains such as `.in', `.gov.in', `.ac.in' and `.info'.

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

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