The ongoing cyber war between India and Pakistan is the latest in the series of such online battles between the two neighbouring countries. GCSRT sources said the dispute between the two countries over Kashmir had spilled into cyber space with each country’s hackers repeatedly targeting the other country’s computing database.

Indian hackers defaced homepages of nearly hundred Pakistani websites on Wednesday, apparently in retaliation to the defacement of more than 2000 Indian websites by Pakistani hackers on Republic day.

The cyber retaliation by the hacker group ‘Indian Cyber Rakshak” may continue for some more time and more Pakistani sites could be targeted, feel cyber security experts based in Bangalore.

Indian hackers had obviously managed to penetrate the servers and hosted messages “Hacked by Indian Cyber Rakshak”. The defaced home pages continued to host the message till evening.

Sources in Bangalore-based Global Cyber Security Response Team (GCSRT) said the retaliatory defacements of Pakistani websites began on Tuesday night. “Close to a hundred websites had been hacked so far”, sources said.

On Republic Day, Pakistani hackers defaced 2,118 Indian websites including those of Central Bank of India and model-turned actress Poonam Pandey. Ms Pandey’s website, which was hacked by a group identifying itself as “Team Madleets”, displayed the messages like “Pakistan Zindabad,” besides “your site security is compromised” and “Patch your site” even on Wednesday afternoon, while the website of Central Bank of India has, however been restored.

Sources in Central Bank of India said the website was restored within minutes of it being hacked two days ago. Now, the users have to use the website through https://www.centralbankofindia.co.in

Though the home page of Indian Railways was not affected, sources in GCSRT said the hackers had managed to upload an index.html in a subdirectory or internal link (" http://er.indianrailways.gov.in/cris/edrm_site/notice/index.html")

Cyber security experts in Bangalore said most of the Indian websites had been defaced by Pakistani hackers going with the handle “StrikerRude”, “KashmirCyberArmy”, “PakCyber Expert”, “HUnter Gujar” and the Operation was named as “#OP26jan”.

The GCSRT member said Republic Day’s hacking of a total of 2,118 websites comes two weeks after 1,400 Indian websites were hacked. A majority of the hacked websites were still being restored, he added.

However, officials in National Informatics Centre (NIC), Bangalore, said they have not received any information of Government websites hosted and managed by them in Karnataka being affected.