India-Pak standoff, hundreds of Indian govt agencies hacked

A report by a leading Indian cyber threat intelligence platform has revealed that over 500 Indian government and private entities have been targeted by pro-Pakistani and Bangladeshi hacktivist groups in the wake of the Pahalgam terror attack. Over 200 cyber attacks have been identified and analysed between 22 April and 8 May 2025. Of these, over 55 per cent were Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, in addition to website defacements, data breaches and data leaks. It is the opinion of an unnamed cybersecurity analyst that none of the attacks were successful. However, hacktivists did launch cyber attacks against high-profile targets, including critical infrastructure such as airports, institutional sites like schools and hospitals, and websites belonging to private citizens. Despite occasional temporary interruptions, the impact of these attacks was negligible, primarily due to the robust preparation of Indian websites’ infrastructure and the absence of involvement by pro-Russian actors, as asserted by cybersecurity expert Nandakishore Harikumar.