50 government websites hacked, 8 data breaches in 2022: IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw

On Friday, the Union Minister for Communications, Electronics and Information Technology informed Rajya Sabha in a written response that 50 government websites were hacked in the year 2022-23. The Union Minister briefed the Upper House on the issue of details of cases of hacking websites of central ministries/departments and state government since 2020, by year.

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

“CERT-In further informed that it detected and prevented 2,83,581, 4,32,057, 3,24,620 malicious scams in the years 2020, 2021 and 2022 respectively,” he informed Rajya Sabha.

Union Minister Vaishnaw further stated that according to information reported and tracked by CERT-In, a total of 6, 7 and 8 data breach incidents related to government organizations have been observed in the during the years 2020, 2021 and 2022 respectively.

“There have been occasional attempts to launch cyber attacks on Indian cyberspace from outside and inside the country. Such attacks have been observed to compromise computer systems located in different parts of the world and use masquerade techniques and hidden servers to hide the identity of the real systems from which the attacks are launched,” he added.

The Union IT Minister further informed Rajya Sabha in a written response that CERT-In coordinates incident response measures with relevant organizations, service providers, respective industry regulators as well as forces of the order. The CERT-In informs the organizations concerned of cyber incidents, as well as the corrective measures 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.