Ranchi, July 13: The website of Jharkhand State Human Rights Commission has been hacked and its pages defaced with anti-government messages, and although experts believe the security breach may have happened on or around July 4, no one in the commission had any clue until today.
The moment the website ( www.jshrc.in) is opened, a window pops up with a message headlined, "Hacked by Mr. H1DD3N". The text that follows is targeted at the government, including the Prime Minister, and condemns the "killing" of minorities and "beef-eaters".
The "About" tab of the website opens up another message that reads, "hacked by vizt3r: p", while the "Contacts" tab opens up to "hacked by SID GIFARI".
The hacker/hackers signed off on a courteous note though. "Sorry for my actions. This is just a lesson for you to make your website more secure. Fix the gap immediately..."
Vineet Kumar, a Ranchi cyber expert, said "SID GIFARI" or "vzt3r" were common names, like twitter handles, used by anonymous hackers. "It is possible the hackers may have used proxy servers routing it through Japan. Going by the history, the website seems to have been hacked on July 4," said Kumar, who was in Delhi, but got his office in the state capital to study the breach.
"This type of hacking is called defacement. Hackers from China are very active currently, but they don't usually deface websites. They slowly enter your website for a targeted attack," explained Kumar, who runs Cyber Peace Foundation.
He also revealed that the commission website was hacked once earlier four-five months ago. "We alerted the commission. But I don't know if any precautions were taken," he said, admitting that he wasn't surprised since most government websites were easy prey for hackers.
"In the past, we have demonstrated to officials about the vulnerability of state government websites and the threat of data theft. It is high time cyber security is taken seriously by one and all," he said.
Jharkhand is not new to cyber glitches. Kumar had articulated similar concerns to this paper when the state welfare department website was compromised in April. For a brief period, Aadhaar, bank and personal details of 14 lakh people, all beneficiaries of social security schemes, were visible to whoever had logged in on April 22.
The commission, a primarily toothless outfit running without a full-time chairman and its full quota of members for over a year, shut down the site in the evening.
Acting secretary Bhagwan Das, who admitted he was wasn't aware of the hacking when The Telegraph called him, later confirmed that he had filed an FIR at Dhurwa police station. "Our technical cell has started work on fixing the website," he said, but did not say when it would be up again.
Das, who is special secretary in the state disaster management department holding dual charge of the commission, also admitted that none of the office phones (2401000, 2401138, 2401181) was working, even taking pains to clarify that he had no idea why.
The commission is without a chairman ever since Justice Narayan Roy retired in January 2016.
The job of the commission is similar to that of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). "Anyone can approach it for registering complaints on issues concerning human rights. It can also take suo motu cognisance of cases whenever it deems fit," said Rabindra Singh, a former member of the state commission who retired in December 2015.
On May 22, NHRC took suo motu congnisance of the May 18 lynchings at Rajnagar and Nagadih that claimed eight persons, and sought a report from the state government.
