NEW DELHI: Cyberattacks on the dedicated website created by Government of India for the G20 Summit held in September 2023 peaked during the conference with 16 lakh bot attacks witnessed per minute as part of an attempted distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, according to I4C CEO Rajesh Kumar. However, agencies like the National Informatics Centre and Computer Emergency Response Team were able to secure the portal, he added.
The aim of a DDoS attack is to overwhelm a network by flooding it with superfluous traffic so it can’t handle requests from legitimate users.
“The attacks started the moment the website went up months ahead (of the summit). They peaked during the summit. The attackers were trying to do a DDoS attack on the day of the summit. There was a lot of pinging so the website went down,” he said.
“When you do a DDoS attack, the attacker creates bots and they act on the attackers’ behalf. They send multiple requests that the system can’t handle,” he said, adding they were treating one DDoS attack involving 16 lakh bots as “one security incident”.
The aim of a DDoS attack is to overwhelm a network by flooding it with superfluous traffic so it can’t handle requests from legitimate users.
“The attacks started the moment the website went up months ahead (of the summit). They peaked during the summit. The attackers were trying to do a DDoS attack on the day of the summit. There was a lot of pinging so the website went down,” he said.
“When you do a DDoS attack, the attacker creates bots and they act on the attackers’ behalf. They send multiple requests that the system can’t handle,” he said, adding they were treating one DDoS attack involving 16 lakh bots as “one security incident”.
