Following recurrence of defacing of government websites by hackers, the Computer Emergency Response Team- Kerala (CERT-K) has requested the government to bring all the websites under the State Data Centre.
Two websites of the Revenue Department, Commissionerate of Land Revenue and the Directorate Survey of Land Records were hacked on Sunday.
These sites are maintained by C-DIT and not by the Data Centre.
Kerala State IT Mission Director and CERT-K director in charge C Jayasankar Prasad said that security check has been made mandatory for all the websites under the Data Centre of IT Mission.
The audit of around 170 government websites has been completed and the vulnerabilities found in some of the websites have been rectified.
‘’Though 13 agencies have been selected to conduct the security check of websites and to issue certificates, a special team from the CERT-K is directly monitoring the websites.
“When all the websites of the government comes under the State Data Centre, the cyber attack will be minimal,’’ Jayasankar Prasad said.
On Sunday, the websites www.clr.kerala.gov.in and www.dslr.kerala.gov.
in were hacked and when opened, a message saying ‘Hacked By Bozkurt97’ appeared on the screen.
The page opens with a picture of a wolf with the description ‘Bozkurt 97’.
It says that ‘Hacked Turkey Security’.
Moreover, it has the description ‘One Turk Against the World’ and a red flag with a crescent and star also flies on the screen.
This was rectified on Monday.
Jayasankar Prasad said that the contents of the website which were hacked cannot be changed.
The hackers upload only a page to say that they have hacked it and this will not damage the websites.
In the background of e-district and m-governance programme being implemented in the state, several important services available to the citizens will be affected.
When the local bodies and village offices are computerised and linked to the government sites, the threat of disruptions increases.
According to Jayasankar Prasad, the threat to the government sites depends on the authorisation given to these institutions to upload the contents.
Security check will be strengthened when more links are added to the government sites, he added.
At present, the majority of the websites in Kerala are being developed by the State Data Centre, National Informatics Centre and agencies outside the country.
To ensure minimal threat to these websites, guidelines have been issued for security audit, mainly for those which have been developed by other agencies.
The Crisis Management Plan prepared by the Union Government to counter cyber attacks has instructed the states to chalk out their own plans to face the threat.