A hacker group defaced websites of 10 institutions including IIT Delhi and IIT-BHU.
Official websites of 10 universities including Aligarh Muslim University, Delhi University and the Indian Institutes of Technology (Delhi) and (Varanasi) were hacked on Tuesday. The hacker group, which identified itself as PHC, or claimed the hacking was in retaliation to attacks on a Pakistan's railway ministry website on Monday, and in solidarity with the Kashmiri people.
"Pakistan Zindabad," the message posted on the websites of the three universities said. "Just here to deliver my message to the government and the people of India," the group wrote in identical messages left on the defaced, home page of the websites.
A big chunk of its message accused the army of killing innocents in Kashmir. "People in Kashmir have the right to live in peace!" the message said.
Other websites which have been hacked are University of Kota; Army Institute of Management and Technology, Greater Noida; Defence Institute of Advanced Technology; Army Institute of Management, Kolkata, National Aerospace Laboratories and Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences (BRNS).
A Delhi University official said the hackers had not defaced the website's home page but made changes that directed surfers to a different page where the message was posed.
In 2016, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team had tracked hacking of 33,000 Indian websites through the year; an average of 90 websites defaced in a day. Only 199 of these, however, were government websites. This was an increase from the 164 government websites hacked in 2015.
On 1 January, hackers had defaced the country's lead anti-terror commando force, the National Security Guard website and left abusive messages. Most investigations into hacking of websites remain unsolved, primarily because the attacks are launched through compromised computer systems located in different parts of the world and the dependence on local law enforcement agencies.
According to the ministry of information technology, attacks on Indian websites have been found to have originated in countries including China, Pakistan, Romania, Hong Kong, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Italy and the US.