Government has ordered blocking of more than 250 websites for uploading morphed pictures emanated from Pakistan to create communal hatred. Stepping up its drive against erring portals, more than 130 websites have been blocked till now while the rest will be blocked shortly.
A Pakistan-based hardline group is suspected to have been involved in doctoring images and spreading them across social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and You Tube to create scare among people of northeastern region living across India.
This has turned out to be the biggest instance of cyber warfare on India in recent times. The government is also planning to take up the international forum, the Computer Emergency Response Team-India's findings on the issue.
Most of the online content started getting posted from 13th of last month and fake profiles were created for spreading morphed pictures.
Social networking sites like Facebook and YouTube have informed the government that inflammatory contents uploaded on their pages originated from Pakistan. In a statement, Department of Electronics and Information Technology said the initial response from international social networking sites indicates that such contents have been hosted from outside the country and to a large extent from a neighbouring country Pakistan.
The response of these websites came after the government ordered ban of more than 250 websites.
Home Secretary R K Singh said India will share with Pakistan evidences on involvement of elements of that country in uploading morphed images. Talking to reporters in New Delhi today, he said that during the conversation with his Pakistani counterpart Rehman Malik, Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde conveyed that New Delhi will share with Islamabad all evidences over the issue.
Malik had said yesterday that New Delhi has not yet shared any evidence which suggested involvement of Pakistani elements in the cyber attack. Asked about these elements having any link with ISI, Singh said it is difficult to say at this stage who were behind it but some photographs have names of one or two organisations of Pakistan.
The probe was on. The Home Secretary also said that the technical investigation has come to the conclusion that many images were uploaded in these websites in Pakistan.
