What the hack! Pakistan nationals deface government college website

HYDERABAD: The website of Government Degree College for Women in Begumpet was recently hacked by Pakistani citizens, in retaliation to the cyber attack of a Pakistani university’s website by Indian hackers. The New Indian Express found that the Osmania University-affiliated college’s website, www.gdcwbegumpet.ac.in, was hacked at the end of January this year by a group of Pakistani hackers called Team Shadow Hunters. 

The group defaced the home page of the website and posted this message: “Greetings administrators. Your system is hacked by Mr. 90. Do not worry, no files or data has been harmed in the process (sic).” The incident was confirmed to Express by the developers of the website. Since the incident, the website has been restored. Attempts to reach college officials went unanswered.

An examination of the Pakistani social media ecosystem indicates that this attack on a government college’s website was a counter-attack to an Indian cyber attack on a Pakistani website. Around the time this incident occurred, an Indian hacker group called “H45h_c47” had hacked the website of University of Swabi in Pakistan. The defaced website read,”University of Swabi got hacked? Hey it’s a payback for hacking Indian websites (sic).”

Explaining why such attacks happen, cyber security expert Rajshekhar Rajaharia said, “Regular security audits of the websites are not done. On top of that, website admins set weak user names and passwords, leaving it vulnerable to brute force attacks.”

Nations trade attacks
Cyber attacks between the two countries have increased in the past month, and many pertain to the anniversary of the Pulwama tragedy, which was on Feb 14