Several government websites, including the Indian Defence Ministry’s website, were on Friday believed to be hacked after they showed a chinese character and an error message. The government said that the error was not caused by a hack, but by a technical glitch.
On Friday, Defense Minister Nirmala Sitharaman tweeted that “action is initiated after hacking” of the Ministry of Defense website and that it will be restored shortly.
Action is initiated after the hacking of MoD website ( https://t.co/7aEc779N2b ). The website shall be restored shortly. Needless to say, every possible step required to prevent any such eventuality in the future will be taken. @DefenceMinIndia @PIB_India @PIBHindi— Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharaman) April 6, 2018
Later on the same day, the Ministry of Electronics and IT issued a statement saying that the websites had in fact not been hacked but were affected by a “technical issue in storage.”
“The site showed what appeared to be a Chinese character and it was understandable that the site was perceived to be hacked,” the government said in the statement. “However, it has since been identified that the sites have not been hacked.”
The websites affected by the glitch were hosted in the NIC data centre (National Informatics Centre) and about 10 government websites became inaccessible to the public.
The websites that were affected include Ministry of Defence, MHA, Department of Public Enterprises, Election Commission, EPFO, Ministry of Labor, and Department of Science & Technology.