The MEA (Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India) computer systems have become the target of hackers from China on Friday. Official sources said that the hackers, who penetrated the computer systems of the MEA, are suspected to be from China because their IP addresses have been traced to China. The sources expressed confidence that no sensitive material was acquired by the hackers who penetrated the system last month.

What were the hackers looking for? Were the hackers trying to sniff into the Tibet policy related data in the MEA servers? On the same day unknown hackers blocked access to the official website of the Tibetan government-in-exile in India, www.tibet.net Read here

The government of India did not rule out recurrence of such incidents in the future and stressed the need for more caution.

In fact last year the Chinese government itself was accused of hacking into the highly sensitive system of the Pentagon in the US. The Chinese government denied that it was behind the attack and said that Beijing was against cybercrime. The hackers had penetrated the computer system in the office of defence secretary Robert Gates in June last year. Official sources added that this was not the first time hackers have targeted the MEA’s computer systems and that there have been numerous attacks from hackers in Europe. They added that hackers have been trying to penetrate the system for the last 5 years.