CHENNAI: The IIT Madras’s central library website and web pages of six of the institution’s departments were hacked on Thursday by unknown persons who had posted messages reading ‘Pakistan Jindabad’.
A few students and alumni of the premium technology institution told Express that they came to know of the hacking of the website around 5.30 am.
Within a few minutes, the messages posted by the hackers were removed and the webpages read that they were “currently down” and the restoration process was on.
The institute’s officials said that a website where information posted on conferences organised by the institute was vulnerable since it was frequently accessed by many.
A few other websites operated by the institute also work out of the same server and the hackers managed to hack those sites as well.
“The site for conference information has the same server for six other departments and also a few other webpages. This webpage in which the information on the conferences is posted is accessed by many outsiders also and hence it was vulnerable,” said Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director of IIT Madras.
He said the websites would be restored soon. He has also asked the website maintenance in charge to make sure that the websites are not hacked again.
“They (hackers) will know the password and they can hack again. So I asked the professor in charge of websites to make sure there is stricter security,” he said. The websites for cultural fests are equally vulnerable, he added.
The departments whose websites were hacked are Humanities and Social Sciences, Management Studies, Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering and Biotechnology.
Besides, the institute’s central library and other websites of other centres like Centre for Technology and Policies, Health Care Innovation Centre, National Cancer Tissue Biobank and National Centre for Combustion Research and Development were also hacked.