Bhubaneswar, April 20: The Odisha Staff Selection Commission's official website - www.ossc.gov.in - was today hacked by a group of people, who claimed to be members of the Philippine Cyber Syndicate.

The commission is a recruitment body functioning under the general administration department and entrusted with the task of selecting Group C employees.

The crime branch has registered a case.

Though the commission's officials denied pilferage of any classified data from the website maintained by the Odisha Computer Application Centre, the information technology department's designated technical directorate, sources said the amount of data loss could only be ascertained by the service provider. The website was designed by a private firm.

The incident came to light around 8am when a logo of an unknown organisation with a tagline "Anonymous ...We are Legion" appeared on the home screen. A message was also displayed on the home screen which read "Good day, Mr Administrator, we hacked your website security to deliver a message. We are Philippine Cyber Syndicate. We fight for freedom and equality. We hate government corruption. We stand as one to protect the cyber world against abusive people using our skills in hacking. Consider this as a warning."

Following the incident the website was deactivated from the server.

"We have asked the service provider to ascertain whether any data has been lost. We have also asked them to resume the website at the earliest to ensure that it did not affect the functioning of the organisation. We have also lodged a complaint with the crime branch," said commission secretary Bijay Kumar Nayak. He also claimed that there was no classified data in the website.

On January 15, the Odisha University of Agriculture's official website - www.ouat.ac.in - was hacked by a student

He was not arrested as the cops said the student did not have any malafide intention.

On January 3, unidentified hackers had taken control of the Ganjam regional transport office website - www.rtoganjam.com.

Principal secretary, department of electronics and information technology, Pradeep Kumar Jena said a probe had already been started in this connection.