BENGALURU: For the third consecutive day on Thursday, the official website of BJP - www.bjp.org - continued to be down. This was after the website was hacked by unknown persons who put up memes on the home page of the hacked site. The delay in restoring the website has prompted several netizens to poke fun at the worlds’ largest political party. According to French security researcher Elliot Alderson (of Aadhaar fame), the delay in restoring the website indicated a massive data leak concerning members of BJP and the donors of the party.
BJP website continued to be down on Thursday evening and posted this message on its homepage till around 7.30 pm - “We’ll be back soon! Sorry for the inconvenience but we’re performing some maintenance at the moment. we’ll be back online shortly!” - which has remained the same for the last three days. After 7.30 pm, attempts to log into the website prompted an error 502 message, indicating an issue with the website server.
This provided ammunition for social media users to pull up the Central government by linking the hack with various controversies faced by it. Elliot Alderson (@fs0c131y) noted, “3 days after being hacked, the official website of @BJP4India is still in “maintenance”. Before wiping everything, I can bet the hackers stole the database with all the BJP members and donors details. If the hackers are seeing this message, I would love to discuss with you.”
Several other netizens linked the issue to schemes like Digital India and the recent much-debated topics such as national security. “Official BJP website hacked - Namumkin Ab Mumkin Hai”, wrote a user Aam Papad (@Aam_Papad), taking a dig at the new slogan of BJP for 2019 polls. Economist Rupa Subramanya (@rupasubramanya) was of the view that the hack reflected poorly on Digital India scheme. “The BJP website is still down 2 days after it was hacked. So much for BJP’s big talk on #DigitalIndia. Embarrassing.”
KP Pandey (@kppandey) wrote, “@narendramodi BJP website hacked. Rafale documents were stolen from defence ministry. Is India in safe hands? Hope PM is doing needful. Public is worried.”
However, there were a few others who did not read much into the hack. “Why would it be embarrassing? Have you forgotten ransomware attacks? Even Pentagon has been hacked. The hackers say that if it is connected to a network, it can be hacked. So, is there any wonder BJP website can be hacked?” wrote jackprinceDFI (@JoeBhiHo123).
The BJP website is still down 2 days after it was hacked. So much for BJP’s big talk on #DigitalIndia. Embarrassing