Beef was served on the Delhi unit of the BJPs website after it was hacked on Thursday. “Shadow V1P3R” claimed credit for hacking the site, replacing details of the party’s leadership, history, and constitution with a beef menu. Interestingly, the website was hacked as Prime Minister Narendra Modi was taking his oath along with new cabinet inductees for their second term in office. The navigation bar on the homepage of the website was edited to replace the word BJP with beef. “About BJP” became “About Beef”, “About Team” was replaced with “Beef Items” and “BJP Leadership” was changed to “Beef Leadership”. Several images on the website were also changed to images of dishes that contained beef. All this was accompanied with the message: “Hacked by Shadow V1P3R”.  At the time of writing this article, the website has been restored to its earlier form after being taken down for a few hours, and the BJP has made no formal announcement on the hack. It remains unclear, however, if the data of donor details and party members has been compromised.

Not the first time that the BJP’s website was hacked

Interestingly, this is not the first time that one of BJP’s websites has been hacked. In March this year, the BJP’s main website was hacked and showed a meme of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and German chancellor Angela Merkel along with a few derogatory statements. The website was taken down for more than two weeks following the hack and showed the message: will be back online shortly.

Before that, the personal website of Gujarat BJP vice-president IK Jadeja was hacked and defaced with a “Pakistan Zindabad” message. In April 2018, multiple union government websites, including of the Defence Ministry, crashed simultaneously. The MoD’s website was defaced by suspected Chinese hackers; the National Informatics Centre denied that the website was hacked, and that it was “some technical issue.” The website of the Ministry of Home Affairs was taken down as a security measure. Websites of the Ministry of Law and Justice, the Ministry of Labour & Employment and the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports also showed error messages.