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Hackers worked overtime in October and defaced over 143 Indian websites during the month compared to just 60 sites that were defaced during September.

According to India's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), that has been closely monitoring all incidents of defacement to know which are the targeted domains and the exact vulnerabilities being exploited by hackers, of the total number of sites that were hacked and defaced in October, an overwhelming majority were in the .com domain (90 cases) followed by 26 in the .in domain.

As many as 11 defacement incidents were also recorded in the .org domain.

Of all hacking incidents in the month, about 61% related to phishing, 27% unauthorized scanning and 8% to virus/worm under the malicious code category. "As compared to the previous month, the number of phishing incidents have decreased while scanning incidents have increased," it said.

Like the West, India too has been witnessing a massive rise in phishing attacks. Such incidents in 2006 were 180% higher than 2005, and that trend has carried through into 2007.

According to experts, even though India over the years has been recording the maximum of defacements during August, to coincide with the country's Independence Day, this year saw February and March record the highest such cases with 858 and 738 websites defaced respectively.

August saw 345 websites defaced. While January saw 332 cases of defacement and April 306. the numbers dipped in the months of May, June, July with 110, 33, and 48 cases of defacement recorded respectively.

Website defacement is when a hacker breaks into a web server and alters the hosted website or creates one of his own. A message is often left on the webpage stating his or her pseudonym. Sometimes the defacer makes fun of the system administrator for failing to maintain server security.

In most case, the defacement is harmless. However, it can sometimes be used as a distraction to cover up more sinister actions such as uploading malware.

An expert told TOI "Hackers in India are defacing websites for four reasons -- post politically motivated messages, prove technical skill, have fun and do it for the sake of it without realizing the consequences.

Most of the websites defaced are in the .com category because they are less secure and have multiple hosting in a single server. The months of February and March saw mass defacement which occurs when multiple websites are hosted on a single server."

The top hacker groups involved in defacement activities in India have been found to be Lord, CyberLord, yusufislam, Devil-X, ardeshackerlar and crackers child.