On Friday evening the official website of the Ministry of Defence was hacked. The mod.gov.in website shows an error message which carries some Chinese character on the top. It has been considered that the cyber attack took place from the northern neighbour.
Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman confirmed that the site had been hacked. She said that steps would be taken to prevent such an instance in the future. "Action is initiated after the hacking of MoD website ( http://mod.nic.in ). The website shall be restored shortly. Needless to say, every possible step required to prevent any such eventuality in the future will be taken," she tweeted.
However, the usual hacking markers by a group of hackers was missing. Hacked government websites usually end up displaying some embarrassing political message. Along with the hackers' group claiming responsibility. There were no signs of the above-mentioned were present on the MoD website hack.
Efforts to visit the MoD website around 3:30 pm showed a message that read, "The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later." The purportedly Chinese characters seem to mean 'home'. This ties in with the fact that it worked as a key that linked back to the MoD website homepage itself.
This has sparked speculation on social media sites that the website was hacked by Chinese hackers. Cyber attacks by hackers backed by the Chinese government are considered fairly common by the international community. However, the Chinese government usually denies any links to hackers.