Till recently, Collective Anonymous, the underground hacker group, used to target public and other important websites to deny services to their respective users.

Hackers from these countries started an ideology that speaks about free speech and free information. 

Now anti-virus firms see clear and present danger of this virus spreading to India. They show attacks on the websites of apex court and political parties as an example.

Recently, about 20 websites of Andhra Pradesh Government were forced out of work for a few days, following a targeted attack on them.

Denial of Services

These attacks, also referred to as Denial of Services (DoS) or Distributed DoS (DDoS), send a chill down the spine of administrators of these sites. For, denial of service would mean a lot of inconvenience to its regular visitors.

“For the first time when late last year, Indian hackers under the banner of Anonymous tried to hack into Indian Government websites (they were successful too). But due to in-fighting and lack of leadership, there was a fall-out,” Mr Govind Rammurthy, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of eScan, has said.

But they seem to have come back. “This time around, it seems they have changed the internal structure,” he said.

Blocking of sites

The Government of India's decision to ban a lot of sites without taking into consideration that — it is the selective content, which should be blocked, and not the entire sites. This could lead to hurting the sentiments of people, he felt.

Not many Governments try to be a net-nanny. But whenever they have tried — these governments have been at the receiving end.

Restrictions by public agencies on the Internet would lead to DDoS attacks. “They are a mode of expression something similar to Rail Roko or Rasta Roko,” he said.

Hactivism

Mr. Baburaj Varma, Head - Technical Services (India and SAARC), Trend Micro, said that hactivism is not new to india.

“We have been victims with a large number of websites of both government and non-government were attacked in the past by hostile hacktivists from across the borders,” he said.

These have now become a prominent mechanisms to express dissent, prove a point or simply make the attackers voice heard.

kurmanath@thehindu.co.in

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