Ram Mandir inauguration in January, hackers and cyber criminals, predominantly from China and Pakistan, were constantly targeting the websites of the Ram Temple, Prasar Bharti and other digital assets of critical infrastructure in Uttar Pradesh (UP), officials told ET.
The government had blocked 1244 IP addresses, of which 999 were from China alone. «The rest of the blocked addresses were from Pakistan, Hong Kong and Cambodia,» officials said.
Since the government had anticipated a rise in cyber-attacks during the inauguration, all the pre-emptive measures were put in place. The Telecom Security Operation Centre (TSOC) was monitoring around 264 websites including that of the Ram Temple, Prasar Bharti, UP Police, airport, UP tourism, and the power grid among others round the clock to prevent any cyber-attack. «It was a 7-day drill to guard the digital assets as we had anticipated a rise in cyber-attacks. Since the main event was on January 21, we had to secure the assets before and after the event also,» a person privy to the details said.
During the monitoring, it was observed that about 140 compromised IP addresses were targeting the Ram Temple and Prasar Bharti websites. Following identification, the internet service providers were asked to block access of those IP addresses.