EXCLUSIVE HACKING India PUNE: Theatre Academy’s website hacked,‘Pak Zindabad’ message posted

EXCLUSIVE HACKING India PUNE: 

Theatre Academy’s website hacked,‘Pak Zindabad’ message posted

8 march 2014

  Pune | October 7, 2013 2:46 am

Summary

In a cyber defacement attack,some websites were hacked by Pakistan-based hackers.

Related

Cyber attack on Independence Day eve rattles many in city

In a cyber defacement attack,some websites including that of Pune-based Theatre Academy — http://www.tapune.com — was hacked and offensive messages were posted allegedly by Pakistan-based hackers. A similar incident had occurred on the eve of Independence Day this year.
Cyber security experts said apart from the website of Theatre Academy,those of a temple in Chhattisgarh and private companies based out of Mumbai,were hacked since Saturday night. Messages criticising Indian defence forces and saying ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ were posted on the hacked page,also called the defacement mirror,said experts.
The websites attacked on Saturday were showing the same defacement page till late on Sunday.
In a similar attack,official websites of the Pune Traffic Police,minister Rajesh Tope and that of local NGO Janwani were defaced on August 14. These websites were restored a couple of days later.
Sagar Atre of Theatre Academy said,“We have organised a state-level musical competition. Application forms and rule books for the same were available on the website. We started getting calls from people that they could not access the website. Then we realised that it had been hacked.”
A cyber crime cell officer said on condition of anonymity,“Such attacks are part of a cyber war.”
City-based cyber security expert Rushikesh Nandedkar said,“These types of attacks are called defacement attacks. Usually done by taking advantage of the badly configured web servers and vulnerabilities present over web servers. A system called domain name server (DNS) poisoning is used by the hackers to carry out these attacks.”
Deputy Commissioner of Police (cyber crime and economic offences) Sanjay Shinde said,“If the ‘search’ option is available on a website,it becomes vulnerable to attacks as criminals use that structure as an entry. It is advisable that the vulnerability assessment and penetration test is performed on the website and loopholes are plugged by taking help from experts. Secure coding should be employed and regular security assessment should be done to prevent attacks.”