Rebuffing the reports of hacking of the government website, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) on Friday informed that almost 10 Government websites became inaccessible to the public since afternoon due to some 'technical reasons'.
The NIC said that there was no cyber attack of any nature.
"The site showed what appeared to be a Chinese character and it was understandable that the site was perceived to be hacked. It has been identified that the sites have not been hacked," a statement from NIC read.
The NIC said that the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Home Affairs, Department of Public Enterprises, Election Commission, Employees' Provident Fund Organisation, Ministry of Labor, Department of Science and Technology were some, which was down in the afternoon are up and running.
Earlier in the day, the official website of Ministry of Defence appeared hacked, raising a serious question on the security system of the country.
On visiting, the website displayed an 'error' message and asked users to 'try again later' with Chinese characters appearing on the home page of the website.
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Soon after the reports, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the website will be restored shortly and assured to take steps to prevent such eventuality in the future.
"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. @DefenceMinIndia @PIB_India @PIBHindi," Sitharaman Tweeted.
Following the incident, the Twitter stormed with comment criticizing the incident.
Evidently, the cyber attack has not been a new strategy and government officials have been prime targets of the hackers.
In 2016, a total of 199 government websites were hacked in India, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had told the Parliament.
In fact, more than 700 websites under the Indian government have been hacked from 2013 to 2016.
Last year in January, the website of the National Security Guard (NSG), the Indian Special Forces unit combating terror activities, was also hacked posing an unprecedented threat to national security.
The website was, however, blocked immediately by the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT.IN).
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