[Update] After Ministry of Defence And Home Affairs, Law Ministry Website Goes Down

Soon after the official website of the Ministry of Defence—mod.gov.in went down, the websites of Ministry of Home Affairs (mha.gov.in) and Law Ministry (http://lawmin.gov.in/) went down as well. On visiting the MHA website this message is flashed: “The requested service is temporarily unavailable. Sorry for Inconvenience. It would be available soon." The Law Ministry website also showed a similar message: "The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later."

After an alarm of an alleged cyber attack was raised following a tweet by Nirmala Sitharaman, Defence Minister of India indicating a cyber attack, National Cyber Security Coordinator Gulshan Rai dismissed the claims by blaming a "storage area networking system failure" for the dysfunctioning of the websites.

Last year, the official website of Ministry of Home Affairs was reported to be hacked but the MHA officials later denied it and said that the website was down for maintenance.

Visitors to the Defence Ministry website are shown this message: “The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later". Several reports claimed that the website was hacked by Chinese hackers as it showed a Chinese character which means ‘Zen’ according to Google Translate. "Action is initiated after the hacking of MoD website ( http://mod.nic.in ). The website shall be restored shortly. Needless to say, every possible step required to prevent any such eventuality in the future will be taken," said Nirmala Sitharaman, Defence Minister of India.

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"We are seized of the matter. The National Informatics Centre, which maintains the website, is trying to restore it," a spokesperson in the ministry said. Another official said Chinese hackers may be involved in defacing the website, according to PTI. Previously, the official website of Ministry of Home Affairs was also reported to be hacked but the MHA officials later denied it and said that the website was down for maintenance.

Last year, Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju said in a written reply to Lok Sabha that over 700 websites of various central and state government departments were hacked in the past four years. Of the total of 707, 199 of them were hacked last year, 164 in 2015, 155 in 2014 and 189 in 2013. Rijiju had informed earlier that a total of 8,348 persons were arrested for their involvement in cyber crimes.

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