After the Kerala government website was reported to have been hacked by suspected Pakistani hackers, an online vigilante group calling themselves ‘The Mallu Cyber Soldiers’ on Facebook have retaliated. These self-styled warriors along with several other covert Indian teams claim to have defaced more than 100 Pakistani sites including a few of the country’s government portals.
Some of the hacked websites were carrying pictures of the flag of Pakistan set ablaze, at the time of writing this post. Many of them were displaying a warning, telling trouble makers to stay away from Indian cyber space. Earlier in the day, a pro-Pakistani group was alleged to have hacked into the Kerala government site and posted an image of a burning Tricolor along with the messages ‘Security is just an illusion’ and ‘We are Team Pak Cyber Attacker.’
The exact identity of the main hacker isn’t known, though he seems to go by the name Faisal. This is not the first time cyber criminals suspected to be from Pakistan have targeted accounts or sites from India. In late 2014, attackers took control of actor Mohanlal’s blog and uploaded messages supporting Pakistan’s view on the issue of Kashmir. Earlier this year, a Pakistani cyber security firm was accused of stealing India’s defense data.
Also see: Pak cyber security firm accused of stealing Indian defense data
Similar allegations were leveled against Chinese hackers too recently. The official website registered by the Kerala government is up and running at present. Apart from The Mallu Cyber Soldiers, certain other Indian hacker groups called Hell Shield Hackers, Team Hind Hackers and CY83R_P1R4735 also claim credit for taking down a long list of Pakistani portals in answer to the attack.