Over 17 lakh cyber-attacks, more than 41,000 Indian websites hacked in 18 months: Govt

Explaining the modus operandi, the minister said the attackers compromise computer systems located in different parts of the world and use masquerading techniques to hide the identity of actual systems from which attacks are launched.

“According to the logs analysed and made available to CERT-In, the IP addresses of computers can be traced to Algeria, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Netherlands, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, USA, Vietnam etc”, the minister said.

The IT Ministry informed Parliament that 59 mock drills have been held to assess cybersecurity and the preparedness of state government organisations and critical sectors. As many as 565 organisations across states and sectors such as finance, defence, power, telecom, transport, energy, space and IT participated in these mock drills, he added.

The Computer Emergency Response Team is mandated to track and respond to cyber security incidents and the government follows a cyber-crisis management plan for countering the attacks and cyber-terrorism.

Just two weeks ago, Union Minister for Power, New and Renewable Energy RK Singh had told the Rajya Sabha that cyber security incidents were reported at four out of five regional centres that handle India’s electricity load management functions.

In February this year, US cyber security firm Recorded Futures had said that a China-linked group Red Echo had targeted the Indian power sector amid heightened border tensions.