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The website of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) was hacked on Monday, four days after the Indian Army had conducted surgical strikes across the Line of Control in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).
Access to the NGT homepage and archives was restricted on Monday evening by a hacker, who lashed out against the army operations.
The hacker posted a message laden with expletives, that the hacking is the retaliation to the "killing of innocents in Kashmir" and "violating the ceasefire".
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Apart from the message being written in green and white, the colors of the Pakistani flag, an audio clip played a rendition of the Pakistan's national anthem in the background.
Experts suggested the NGT may have been targeted owing to a comparatively weaker firewall, which protects against such malicious attacks, compared to other government websites. They added that the hacking may take time to be reversed as the hacker had encrypted the website making it difficult to be accessed for restoration purposes. A search of the hackers name showed multiple such attacks by him previously on various websites, mostly belonging to Indian institutions and businesses.
"This is a classic case of cyber warfare where a website of a statutory authority is sought to be defaced with messages challenging the sovereignty of a country. The very fact that the last line of the threat (reference to cyber warfare) indicates that we should not take these things lightly.", said Pawan Duggal, cyber law expert and advocate, Supreme Court.
The National Informatics Centre which maintains government websites as well as the Electronics and Information Technology ministry could not be reached for comments.
This is the second time after 2013 that the website has been hacked.
