Pro-Pak cyber vandals hack, deface Bihar tourism site

Unidentified cyber vandals hacked the official website of Bihar tourism, heaped abuse on Indians and posted the slogan, ‘Pakistan zindabad’.

Unidentified cyber vandals hacked the official website of Bihar tourism, heaped abuse on Indians and posted the slogan, ‘Pakistan zindabad’.

HT Image

The hacking of website www.bihartourism.gov.in was discovered on Saturday. Official sources said it was significant the hacking came so soon after the Hyderabad twin blasts on Thursday.

“A message posted by the hackers read: Indians beware, stop abusing us or else we will retaliate…,” said a senior police officer. “The server was located within seven minutes of detection of the defacement, around 1 pm”, he claimed.

Sources claimed the hackers had also posted images of Hyderabad blasts. But this could not be confirmed.

The state administration rushed into damage control mode by removing the abusive messages from the site. An official said the data logs indicated the postings originated from a private company based in Jaipur.

“The site was immediately blocked and postings were removed,” said a shocked Bihar tourism minister Sunil Kumar Pintu.

The national informatics center (NIC) and a Mumbai-based firm, which had designed the website, had been alerted and asked to take remedial action to avoid a recurrence of the incident, Pintu told HT.

News of the hacking went viral on the internet, with users venting their outrage over the attack by poating messages on Facebook and Twitter.

Bihar director general of police (DGP) Abhayanand confirmed the incident. “I have asked IG (economic offence unit) Praveen Vashista to conduct an inquiry into the episode”, he told HT.

Contacted Sunday afternoon, Vashista said he would initiate action as soon as the matter was referred to him.