New Delhi: On a day the Indian Parliament discussed ways and means to ‘regulate' internet content, the websites of India's apex court and the ruling Congress party were hacked by ‘hacktivists', protesting attempts to censor the internet. The attack on the websites is suspected to be in response to censorship steps taken by the Indian authorities against some websites. On Thursday the governing body of lawyers in the national capital – Delhi Bar Council – also claimed that unidentified hackers had defaced their website as well. Although the Indian authorities admitted that the website of the Apex Court was down, they denied it had been hacked. The Sonia Gandhi-led Congress party which rules India, too has denied any cyber attack. Anonymous, a well known hacker group is suspected to be involved in the attack on these websites and their action follows the Indian government's action of blacking out Pirate Bay and Vimeo, a video-sharing site. The group's action is seen as a protest against the censorship stance of the Indian federal government. A spokesman of the Congress party meanwhile has denied hacking of the party's official website and claimed the site was not opening because the server was overloaded due to “enormous hits” because the hacking rumors spread. Meanwhile Anonymous had tweeted, just before the websites were down, suggesting it had a hand in the hacking. “Namaste #India, your time has come to trash the current government and install a new one. Good luck” the tweet by Anonymous Central read. The Congress website was also hacked in December last when the profile page of Sonia Gandhi was defaced with embarrassing content. It was timed to coincide with Ms Gandhi's birthday. It also followed a threat by Kapil Sibal to Facebook and Twitter, asking them to delete material offensive to the Indian political establishment. In more serious cyber attack cases, content from the personal computer of an Indian army general was transferred to an operative of the Pakistani spy agency, Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). Also, two diplomats had discovered hacking of their e-mail accounts in Beijing.
