50 Indian govt. websites hacked, 8 data breaches in 2022 alone: IT Minister

Union Minister for Communications, Electronics, and Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, on Friday detailed in the Rajya Sabha via a written reply that 50 government websites were hacked in the year 2022 alone, leading to 8 data breaches.

Communist Party of India MP Binoy Viswam raised a parliamentary question in the upper house on Friday. In response to the question, Vaishnaw stated that 50 Indian government websites, including central government ministries/departments and state governments, were hacked in the year 2022, with the number being 59 and 42 in 2020 and 2021 respectively, according to information tracked by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).

“CERT-In has further informed it has detected and prevented 2,83,581, 4,32,057, 3,24,620 malicious scams during the years 2020, 2021 and 2022 respectively…There have been attempts from time to time to launch cyber-attacks on Indian cyberspace from both outside and within the country. 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,” the IT Minister detailed.

CERT-In notifies affected organisations and provides remedial measures, alongside issuing advisories pertaining to current cyber threats/vulnerabilities, Vaishnaw added in the written reply.