“One minute silence for those who think that by hacking Indian sites they will get Kashmir,” hacktivists called Bl@Ck Dr@GoN, Haxor T0du and Spider64 wrote on the defaced sites and in a statement posted to Pastebin. “Stop hacking Indian sites or expect us. It’s the last warning.”
The hacktivists have targeted the National Portal of Pakistan (Pakistan.gov.pk), and the websites of the Cabinet Ministry (cabinet.gov.pk), the Pakistan Manpower Institute (pmi.gov.pk), the Ministry of Defense (mod.gov.pk), the government’s Establishment Division (establishment.gov.pk), and the Ministry of Railways (railways.gov.pk).
At the time of writing, all of the aforementioned websites display a “Server is Under Maintenance & Thanks for visiting!” error message, which indicates that their administrators are working on restoring them.
Prakhar Prasad, an independent security researcher from India, has analyzed the attack. He believes that the attackers have added a new page or a new entry with their defacement page through the website’s content management system or administration panel.
The attacks part of Operation Pakistan come shortly after a Pakistani hacktivist using the online moniker H4x0r10ux m1nd defaced the official website of the Bangalore City Police.
“Govt. of India it’s time to repay for what you have done to our Kashmiri brothers. You killed them just because they support and want to be a part of Pakistan. You killed many innocent Kashmiris in the name of MUJAHIDDIN. Your army imprisoned & killed many men and children who protest against brutality & stood up for the freedom of Kashmir,” the hacker wrote on the defacement page at the time.
Pakistani hackers have also attacked a number of websites belonging to India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). As a result of the attacks, India’s self-defense mechanisms automatically blocked all users with Pakistani IPs from accessing the websites. BJP representatives said they were in the process of having the sites unblocked.
