Websites of 7 Indian embassies hacked, data dumped online

Indian officials were trying today to restore the websites of seven Indian embassies in Europe and Africa that were hacked and had data dumped online.

The security of the websites of Indian embassies in Italy, Switzerland, South Africa, Libya, Malawi, Mali and Romania was breached by hackers who identified themselves to the media as Kaputsky and Kasimierz L.

"We are aware of the problem and are trying to fix it," external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup told reporters. The websites were reported to be working by this evening.

Attempts were being made to track the IP addresses of the hackers, who posted online the names, email addresses, phone numbers and passport numbers of some embassy staff members. The leaked data was published on the pastebin.com, which has been blocked by the Union government.

The hackers have leaked details about registered Indian nationals, including details about 161 Indians in South Africa, 35 in Switzerland, 145 in Italy, 305 in Libya, 74 in Malawi, 14 in Mali and 42 in Romania.

A twitter handle @Kapustkiy, which identifies itself as security pentester and cyber detective, in a series of tweets, said, "Breached the several Indian Embassy of India. Not all there database were leaked, fix your security and credits to @Kasimierz_ for help."

"But lets being seriously, why in the world does an ''embassy'' has such alot vulnerabilities....After this database breach, they will improve there security better," it said in another tweets.

Several Indian websites have come under attack this year. Last month, Pakistan-based hackers targeted more than 7,000 Indian websites after India launched a series of attacks on terror camps in Pakistan. Also in October, the security of around 3.2 million debit cards in India was breached when hackers inserted malware through an ATM network.