30066 Indian Railways type WAP7 locomotive. (Source: Andrew Thomas/flickr.)
Earlier this week, a microsite of the Indian Railways appeared to be hacked by a group claiming to be Al Qaeda, according to local media. Mashable reports that the hacked page was part of the intranet created for the administration of the Indian Railways and belonged to the Bhusawal division of Personnel Department of Central Railways. The message posted to the site encouraged people to participate in jihad and help defeat the United States and its allies.
As this is the first incident of an Indian government website being infiltrated by a terrorist group (although not the first time a terrorist group has hacked a government website in general), the situation raises a few questions, not the least of which is: Why this particular website?
It’s not like a microsite of the Indian Railways is that big of a deal. Granted, Indian Railways is the fourth largest railway network in the world, according to Tech in Asia. But the message, now gone from the site, creates more concern over the security of Indian internet than it does about Al Qaeda, ISIS, or other terrorist groups in general. (India has a high population of Muslims, but has not been a great source of recruits for these groups.)
Rather, India needs to step up its cyber security game, fortify its government-based websites and figure out how to stem infiltration of any kind, not just terrorist-based hacks. It’s a problem that naturally arises as networks and internet economies try to build out quickly — loopholes are common in rapidly expanding web-based markets as speed overtakes security in terms of priority. India is not the only country wrestling with this issue, but it is at an intriguing crux of the problem given its proximity to the Middle East, burgeoning internet industries, and high concentration of Muslims.
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