More than 24,000 websites were hacked.
By Dileep Thekkethil
BENGALURU: India has registered a whopping 40% increase in cyber crimes registered in the last two years.
According to statistics released by India’s home ministry, cyber crimes involving hacking, publication of obscene content, credit card fraud and banking fraud are on a rise with as many as 62,189 cyber crimes reported till June this year, compared to a total of 71,780 in 2013 and 22,060 in 2012.
The report says that a total of 28,481 Indian websites came under hack attack of various hacking groups from all parts of the world. The number of hacking incidents reported in 2012 and 2011 was fractionally smaller in number with 27,605 and 211,699 hacks, respectively.
Some of the most prevalent cyber-attacks are related to obscene publication, transmission of unauthorized contents, credit card and banking frauds, phishing, scanning, spam, malicious code and web site intrusion.
A Home Ministry official was quoted by PTI as saying, “there has been an annual increase of more than 40% in cybercrime cases registered in the country during the past two-three years. India with a fast growing economy is susceptible to international and domestic cyber-attacks and there is a need to ensure cybercrime-free environment.”
The report has listed the US, Europe, Brazil, Turkey, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Algeria and the UAE as nerve centres of cyber-attacks.
The ministry also observed that cyber attacks are unleashed by servers located in different parts of the world by hiding identity of the original host server and breaching the security walls by importuning as real users.
Officials also said that due to the complexity of the virtual world, which is anonymous and has no borders, it has become very difficult to trace the origin of the cyber attack.
National Cyber Records Bureau data reveals that in 2011, 2012 and 2013 a total of 1,791, 2,876 and 4,356 cases were registered respectively under the Information Technology Act and out of these a total of 442, 601 and 1337 cases were related to cybercrime of the IPC.
The new report was released just weeks after the home minister of India, Rajnath Singh, told Parliament that there is a growing need to strengthen the cyber monitoring system in the advent of increasing number of terror outfits using Internet and social media for propagating their ulterior motives. He was citing the example of the recently busted ISIS Twitter account managed by a Bangalore techie who is now under the custody of the police.