Macabre but hilarious… IIT Kanpur website hacked!

by Amit Ranjan on April 26, 2008

This is serious but also funny. IIT Kanpur’s website has been hacked, possibly by Pakistani hackers! For an institute whose computer science department gets the best of the IIT brainers, this must be embarassing. Apparently, this is not the first time the website has been hacked; as this blogpost & this screenshot indicate, its homepage was earlier modified into the McDonalds Indian Institute of Technology!

And the hackers seem to be ‘benevolent‘ as in evinced by this statement – “we are hackers, not criminals…protect your website….

iitk_website_hacked.jpg

Thanks Bhups (an IITK alumunus) for the tip-off…

{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }

Mahesh April 26, 2008 at 3:31 pm

Hi! Amit

What is so embarrassing about this?

The website is managed by some one hired to be a webmaster, like any other company. Maybe, he must have missed installing the latest apache security patch.

-Mahesh

saz April 26, 2008 at 5:04 pm

can anybody tell what actually happened??
are the hackers caught?

varun April 28, 2008 at 1:57 pm

Ofcourse its embarassing.The webmaster was itself was the guy from their alumi or their staff members.
Now a days its really easy to hack those things…
Keeping updating your server and everything goes correct….

Shrinidhi Hande April 28, 2008 at 2:13 pm

I think it has been recovered now… I see no wrong at the site…

Vishal Kelkar April 28, 2008 at 5:24 pm

Hey did anyone hear about the DDOS attack on Slideshare? I find it funny that the co-founder of this website is talking about hack attacks on other sites…

websatan April 29, 2008 at 7:50 am

Yeah definitely funny, but calls for an immediate attention.

Maneel April 29, 2008 at 5:44 pm

It is embarassing, because IIT K is, or well, supposed to be the best technology institute in India. So, it is expected of them to maintain the highest standards possible.

I’ve observed this very often in India, that we don’t tend to give professionalism as much attention at the education level as we do in when we work for a tom-dick-harry company. And this has to change. IIT K’s website getting hacked, for me atleast puts a question mark on the credibility of whosoever manages the website (and I believe he/she does have a direct affect on what students learn). Imagine MIT.edu getting hacked, IMO, that would make newspaper headlines.

Vishal Kelkar : “Hey did anyone hear about the DDOS attack on Slideshare? I find it funny that the co-founder of this website is talking about hack attacks on other sites…”

Ahh! Well, I don’t think you’ve the slightest idea of what DDOS is. DDOS has the least to do with security. DDOS just means a group of guys is eating your bandwidth and server resources in excess and the normal users are experiencing bandwidth related problems like slow loading of pages, or even unresponding servers!

Good post, Amit, but I think there is some sort of red tapism that still exists in government run institutes, cuz of which a little inefficiency (^^ website hacked) creeps in. Good luck with SShare though.

:)
Maneel

I won't tell my name April 30, 2008 at 8:48 pm

some one hack nit jalandhar website please.
…..

Nilesh Trivedi May 1, 2008 at 4:17 pm

@ Maneel

“some sort of red tapism”

Oh yes. Lots of it. At a certain so called “elite” institute that I went to, any changes to website content must be approved by all of faculty. Result: after getting the new website content & design, it took 2 YEARS to approve the website.

Things are not so rosy at the “elite” institutes. What, you expected a government owned institution to be fast, agile, and responsive? They have built their reputation on the basis of a very competitive entrance exam, that’s all. There is nothing world-class about them.

Mayur Rustagi May 13, 2008 at 5:46 pm

http://mashable.com/2008/04/26/sql-attacks/
if US department of Homeland security along with hundreds of other US government servers can be hacked in one day and escape judgement by general public then how can somebody judge IIT K just on basis of a simple site hack

h4ck3r.iNdIan June 29, 2008 at 1:05 pm

its really shame full for IITES brainer there ar really still in old stone age..i can only =)) =)) them___________________

Akshay November 15, 2008 at 12:01 am

@Maneel
IITs are not supposed to be, they are elite institutions. Ofcourse, your personal opinion may differ but then it does not matter.
@h4ck3r.iNdIan
iitians do not manage the institute website.

Vishwa December 25, 2008 at 9:07 am

There is any one who know exact no & name of websites -hacked.

Purnesh Tripathi September 20, 2009 at 9:37 am

Can anybody please tell me that actually on which particular date was the site hacked??

Shrinidhi Hande February 7, 2010 at 1:38 pm

Today’s news: TCS website tcs.com is hacked… Hope they recover it soon

kransh October 24, 2010 at 4:44 pm

i am not hacker but i am sure that your website will be hack with in two years and you will losed some more. so protect website plz but your time start now

in november 2012 its not a joke but its fake sorry

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