Pakistan-based cyber attackers attempt to hack 3 more military-related websites

Pakistan-based persons have made another unsuccessful attempt to launch a cyber attack on three websites related to the Indian Armed Forces.

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This marks the second such attack in four days.

Like the attack on April 28, no operational website was hit.

The attempted breaches, carried out over the past 24 hours, were attributed to Pakistan-sponsored hacker groups such as “Cyber Group HOAX1337” and “National Cyber Crew”, sources said on Friday.

These hacking efforts were promptly identified and neutralised by cyber security agencies.

Among the latest attacks were the websites of Army Public School (APS) Nagrota and Sunjuwan, respectively. These were attempted to be defaced with messages mocking the victims of the recent Pahalgam terror attack. In another incident, a website catering to ex-servicemen’s healthcare services was also defaced.

There have been repeated attempts made by hackers operating from Pakistan to attack websites having linkages to children, military veterans and other innocent people.

Sources said Pakistan has redirected its effort towards publicly accessible welfare and educational websites after finding mission-critical national networks impenetrable.

In the past, attempts were made to hack the website of Army Institute of Hotel Management.

On April 28, the websites of APS Srinagar and APS Ranikhet were targeted with an attempt to upload inflammatory propaganda. The APS Srinagar website also faced a distributed-denial-of-service assault.

Another attempted breach was tried on the Army Welfare Housing Organisation (AWHO) database, while a concurrent effort was made to compromise the Indian Air Force Placement Organisation portal.

These cyberattacks have intensified following the Pahalgam terror attack on April 22 and a series of ceasefire violations along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir over the past one week.

The hackers sought to deface pages, disrupt on-line services and harvest personal information. However, India’s layered cyber-security architecture responded effectively, detecting the intrusions in real time and tracing their origin back to Pakistan.