On Friday, an Indonesian cyber-attack group was allegedly targeting 12,000 Indian government websites, as per the cyber-security information alert issued by the Centre.

The alert assessed by the media report was delivered by the Ministry of Home Affairs’ Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) on April 13.

The alert mentioned in a report that state and central government websites are potentially being targeted, urging the concerned government officials to take defensive measures.

A massive ransomware attack crippled the systems of All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) in the last year, interpreting its centralised records as inaccessible, besides hospital services.

Overall, the Indian government chronicled 19 ransomware attacks against many government organisations in 2022, three times the previous year’s record.

The I4C alert stated that an Indonesian “hacktivist” group launched denial of service (DoS) along with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. DDoS attacks mean a planned paralysing of a computer network with data sent concurrently from many distinct computers.

The alert added that the hacktivist group released a list of government websites claiming targets, which comprised state and Central government websites.

In 2022, a Malaysia hacktivist group targeted Indian government websites over political chaos that vented on comments made against Prophet Muhammad.

Malaysian hacktivist group DragonForce embattled several Indian government websites, including Indian Embassy in Israel (indembassisrael[.]gov[.]in), the National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management (manage[.]gov[.]in).

Recently, the government unconfined the third version of Guidelines for India Government Websites (GIGW 3.0), providing guidelines to officials on safety and security to develop, maintain, and manage government websites, portals, and mobile applications.