SC site pulled down after hacking attempt

The Supreme Court’s website was inaccessible on Thursday afternoon as it was reportedly hacked 30 minutes after the court delivered the verdict in the BH Loya case. It wasn’t immediately clear if there was a link between the ruling, dismissing a probe into the judge’s death, and the hacking.

People familiar with the matter in SC said the court’s technical wing that hosts the website detected a hacking attempt and pulled down the site as a security measure. Officials attached to the court’s registry insisted there had been no data theft. The website was restored at 7pm but was not fully functional till the time this report went into print.

A fortnight ago, several government websites crashed, leading to speculation that Chinese hackers were behind it. But national cyber security chief Gulshan Rai explained that 10 websites hosted by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) went down after a hardware failure.

Dubai-based cyber security expert Dhruv Soi said the SC website was allegedly hacked by a Brazilian hacker group, which is recognized as ‘HighTech’.

“Hackers took control and posted a banner ‘HighTech Brazilian HackTeam’. The website, including the banner, was taken offline and the website was pushed into maintenance by its management team,” said Soi.

Rai said the website was maintained by court administration while other government sites are hosted on NIC servers. “The NIC provided all help to SC to restore it. We will work with SC to make its site more secure,” he said.