(Author: Diana Rathod)
A hacking group called 'hacktivist Indonesia' circulated a list of 12000 Indian government websites which they want to target.
The list includes government websites such as - Aadhar, departments of police, space, income tax and even consulate websites.
The alert was issued by MHA’s Indian Cyber Crime coordination Centre (I4C) on the basis of inputs received from its Cyber threat intelligence wing and also shared with CERT-In.
Motive of hackers
They attack the government websites and try to slow down these websites by different means like DDoS attack in which an attacker floods a website with internet traffic to prevent users from accessing connected online services & websites [1][2]
Hacktivists perform such attacks
To have fun by exploiting a weakness, or express disapproval.
To involve in extortion, in which an attacker attacks a website and installs a ransomware on their system, and then forces them to pay a large financial amount to reverse the damage caused or to recover the stolen confidential and important
How to know if you are under DDOS attack?
A website becomes slow to access or even inaccessible
A network suddenly can’t connect to the internet
Slow or unresponsive servers
A sudden influx of requests to a specific endpoint or page
A flood of traffic that originates from a single IP or range of IP addresses
Files loading slowly or not at all
You receive a ransom or extortion demand from some attackers
You receive HTTP 503 Service Unavailable Error
How to protect against DDOS attacks?
Monitoring your websites activities
Use a robust web application firewall
Implement caching for your website
Consider using a Virtual Private Network (VPN)
Be-aware of and avoid social engineering scams
Keep systems and resources up-to-date in their software versions
References
Comments