Nupur Sharma fallout: Hacktivists of Malaysia, Indonesia wage cyber-war against India

AHMEDABAD: In an important revelation, the Ahmedabad Crime Branch said Malaysian and Indonesian hacktivists are now targeting India, and urged the Muslim hackers all around the world to start a cyber-war against India.

In a press conference, Amit Vasava, DCP, Cyber Crime, Ahmedabad said: “Post the Nupur Sharma incident, 2 hacker groups, 'Dragon force Malaysia' and 'Hacktivist Indonesia', initiated a cyber war against India, also appealed to Muslim hackers around the world for the same."

“Over 2,000 websites were hacked by hacker groups. Ahmedabad cybercrime has written to Malaysian and Indonesian governments along with writing to Interpol for lookout notice for both groups,” said DCP, Cyber Crime

Reveling the detail, the DCP said: “Dragon ForceIO of Malaysia and Hacktivists of Garuda of Indonesia have claimed to have hacked 2000+ Indian Websites which includes Government Department, Educational Institutes, Businesses, and Industries, etc. Confidential data has been leaked from such websites which include details like, Government Files and Data, Aadhaar cards of some persons, Pan card and Passport details of some citizens, Details of Policemen of Andhra Pradesh Police, DishTV data,”

He further said: “Assam-based news channel 'TIME8' said its YouTube account was hacked during a live stream by a Pakistan-based hacking group identified as 'Revolution PK'. Not only this, even ID cards and personal details of the Andhra Pradesh Police Officers were also leaked.’

‘Details of Nupur Sharma, with address, email id, contact number, etc were leaked from some government websites. Many internal government databases have been hacked and leaked to these hackers’ said DCP

The technical team of Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Branch has sought and found vulnerabilities in 100 plus Indonesian government websites and 70 plus Malaysian websites. These vulnerabilities, or ‘bugs’, could have been exploited by any hacker and may have been used for destroying these websites or for stealing data. These bugs have been found after taking permission from the governments of these countries and have been reported to them along with ‘Proof of Concept’. Several of the bugs were of P1 category (the most critical and exploitative bugs).

The websites with bugs cover several critical ministries of their government, educational institute, industry, etc. The Bugs include Admin Panel Takeover, Sensitive Information Leak, SQL Injection, Source Code disclosure, etc. Such ethical disclosure of such network vulnerabilities has been a message of peace against the cyber-war declared by their hacker groups. The National Cyber Coordination & Command Centre (N4C) of Malaysia has shown its gratitude for such contributions.

The team has also used its technical capabilities to find the identities of hackers of both Dragon Force Malaysia and Hacktivists of Garuda Indonesia. The details like IP addresses are being shared with Interpol for further legal action against them.

Along with this, the Cyber team has also discovered several vulnerabilities in 80 plus Indian Government Websites and have reported them to National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC), under PMO.