50 Government Websites Hacked, 8 Data Breaches in 2022: IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw

Union Minister for Communications, Electronics, and Information Technology on Friday informed Rajya Sabha in a written reply that 50 government websites have been hacked in the year 2022-23. Union Minister informed the upper House on the question of the details of instances of hacking of Central Ministries/Departments and State Government websites since 2020, year-wise.

In response to a parliamentary question raised by CPI MP Binoy Viswam, Minister said that as per information reported to and tracked by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), a total of 59, 42 and 50 websites of the Central Government Ministries/Departments and State Governments were hacked during the years 2020, 2021 and 2022 respectively.

"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," he informed Rajya Sabha

Union Minister Vaishnaw further said that as per the information reported to and tracked by CERT-In, a total number of 6, 7 and 8 data breach incidents related to government organisations were observed 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" he added

Union IT Minister further informed Rajya Sabha in a written reply that CERT-In coordinates incident response measures with affected organisations, service providers, respective sector regulators as well as law enforcement agencies. CERT-In notifies the affected organizations regarding cyber incidents, along with remedial actions to be taken. It also issues alerts and advisories on an ongoing basis regarding the latest cyber threats/vulnerabilities and countermeasures to protect computers and networks.