Gujarat ATS arrests 18yearold for cyberattacks during Operation Sindoor Latest News India Hindustan Times

pSubscribe Now Get features likeppAhmedabad The Gujarat AntiTerrorism Squad ATS has arrested 18yearold Jasim Shahnawaz Ansari from Nadiad who along with other juvenile accomplices orchestrated multiple cyberattacks against several Indian government websites especially amid Operation Sindoor Indias military response following the Pahalgam terror attack ppThe accused a 12thgrade dropout gained expertise in various programming languages but his case exemplifies knowledge gone astray driven not by financial motives but by radicalised ideology The accused attempted to bring down at least 20 government websites on May 7 the day when Operation Sindoor was launched Ansari also shared provocative antiIndia messages on Telegram including statements like India may have initiated it but we will conclude it Virjit Parmar deputy superintendent of police Gujarat ATS told HT ppParmar said that a case had been registered against the accused on May 19 at ATS Police Station under sections 66F and 43 of the Information Technology Act 2000 Section 66F deals with cyberterrorism criminalising acts that threaten Indias security or disrupt essential services through computer resources while Section 43 covers unauthorised access to or damage of computer systems ppThis arrest comes amid heightened vigilance by Indian security agencies following directives from both central and state governments to monitor antinational activities across internet platforms including the dark web following Operation Sindoor said a second official The group led by accused Ansari has allegedly targeted more than 50 central and state government websites so far ppInvestigation by Gujarat ATS showed that Ansari and other juvenile offenders had created a Telegram group called Anonsec and were attempting to bring down various Indian websites through Distributed DenialofService DDoS attacks They are used to overwhelm servers with malicious traffic making them inaccessible to legitimate users Such attacks can disrupt online services cause financial damage and harm an organisations reputation ppThe investigation revealed that the group specifically targeted websites in critical sectors including defence finance aviation urban development institutions and state government portals They took screenshots of these attacks and posted them on the Telegram group along with antiIndia inflammatory content ppWhile Ansari has been arrested the ATS has not disclosed the exact number of juvenile accomplices involved in the cyber terror campaign These juveniles will be processed according to the Juvenile Justice Act officials said ppThe suspects learned Python programming language and used tools like Pydroid and Termux to execute their attacks They cloned DDoS attack tools from GitHub and modified them to target specific websites said an official ppThe ATS investigation showed that the accused learned hacking skills from YouTube and used tools downloaded from GitHub They deployed TERMUX and PYDROID3 applications to execute DDoS attacks which overwhelm servers with malicious traffic making them inaccessible to legitimate users These attacks can disrupt online services cause financial damage and harm an organisations reputation ppAfter disrupting government websites the perpetrators posted screenshots on their Telegram channel with antiIndia messages such as Several Government sites of India has been touch by AnonSec and Hi India we just took down your financial shield and servers ppppp