Over 130 government Web sites hacked during January-March 2012

New Delhi, April 25 (IANS) Over 130 government websites were hacked during the first three months of 2012, Minister of State for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot said Wednesday.

"As per incidents reported to and tracked by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), 133 government Web sites were hacked during January to March 2012," Pilot said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

Pilot said the government had taken various measures to tackle cyber crimes like setting up of early warning and response to cyber security incidents through the CERT-In and collaboration at national and international levels for information sharing and mitigation of cyber attacks.

It was also mulling plans to set up a Cyber Coordination Centre to stop cyber crimes.

"Preliminary discussions have been held on establishment of a multi stakeholder Cyber Coordination Centre which will detect malicious cyber activities in the Indian Cyber space and issue early warning alerts," Pilot added.

A total of 9,22,04,248 government websites were hacked during the years 2009, 2010 and 2011.

As per the Reserve Bank of India, 2,232 Internet fraud cases involving Rs.1,234.94 lakh were registered in the year 2010 while Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registered two cyber crime cases involving Rs.17 lakh during 2010.

According to Norton Cyber Crime Report published in August 2011, $4 billion were lost due to cyber crime in India compared to $114 billion world-wide and 80 percent of the people surveyed experienced cyber crime.