The Indian National Congress' website was reportedly hacked and its party leader, Sonia Gandhi's profile page defaced with sexual innuendo and pornographic messages, according to reports from Reuters and AFP. While it's not clear as to when the attack took place, the reports suggest that the attack was timed to coincide with the party president's 65th birthday today. They also suggest that the website has been inaccessible to the public since noon after the hacked profile was discovered. However it must be noted that MediaNama is unable to verify any of the claims and the Congress' website was working, at the time of writing this post. The AFP report quotes Congress spokesperson Tom Vadakhan who acknowledged that he was aware of the incident and informed that the Congress party's computer department was currently investigating it. The text left on the defaced site included a reference to a Pakistan-based email address, according to the report. This attack comes close on the heels of Indian government asking ISPs and Internet companies including Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to remove any defamatory, obscene and inflammatory material from their platforms and bring in mechanisms to “pre-screen” user generated content from the country to avoid any such objectionable material on their websites. There were reports that the Government had come into action after it discovered certain objectionable content including caricatures of the Congress President, Sonia Gandhi. Cybercrimes & the Indian Govt.: The Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology, Sachin Pilot, had informed the Lok Sabha, earlier this month, that cyber crime cases has more than doubled…
