Anonymous Hacks into NIC Website Again and Leaks Admin Logins

For the second time in a week, Anonymous members have hacked into a system belonging to India's National Informatics Centre (NIC) and leaked administrative login credentials for several official websites.

Following a violent government crackdown on anti-corruption protests led by political activist Baba Ramdev, the Anonymous hacktivist collective launched OpIndia in support of the movement.

The group's first target was the National Informatics Centre, the government's top cyber agency in charge of its network infrastructure.

NIC hosts many websites belonging to different government departments, local administrations and other official institutions.

During the first attack, Anonymous members defaced the website hosted on a NIC subdomain. "There is no use securing. There is no use of spending on forensic. Get this message clear Mr. Prime Minister and others," they wrote.

But that wasn't enough and the hackers returned to compromise the entire server. As a result, login information for NIC's database was leaked on pastebin, together with administrative credentials for aera.gov.in (Airports Economic Regulatory Authority), www.ceib.nic.in (Central Economic Intelligence Bureau) and ciet.nic.in (Central Institute of Educational Technology).

NIC's website, informatics.nic.in, was taken down by the agency and currently displays a maintenance notice. The Hacker News reports that indianarmy.nic.in, the official site of the Indian Army was also affected by this incident and is currently unavailable.

"We are not Terrorists. We just want our words to be heard," the hackers wrote in their pastebin dump. They also point out that they didn't exploit the stolen logins, even though they could have easily done it.

Anonymous members might be driven by high ideals, but the methods they use to promote them are illegal and they involve a lot of risks. Just today, the Spanish police arrested three individuals suspected of being high-ranking Anonymous members responsible for attacks on Sony and various other companies.