NEW DELHI: Indian government several ministries websites have been hackedtoday.

The hack of the website of the Ministry of Defence seems to have spookedthe Central government as a whole. A short while after DefenceMinister confirmed the hack, the Home Ministry took down its site for asecurity upgrade. The Law Ministry’s website was also down, though it ispresently unclear if it was done intentionally.

A government spokesperson said the MHA site has been taken down to allow asecurity upgrade. The upgrade is being implemented by the NationInformatics Centre (nic), which hosts most government websites.

“Site off-line. The site is currently not available due to technicalproblems. Please try again later. Thank you for your understanding,” readthe message on the Home Ministry site.

The spokesperson said the move has been taken as part of extra precautions.

However, there is no confirmation from the Law Ministry site on whether thesite has been taken down, or chose to go down on its own.

The move came after the website of the Ministry of Defence was hacked onFriday evening. The mod.gov.in website displayed an error message andcarried what seemed to be some Chinese characters on top, sparkingspeculation of a cyberattack from the northern neighbour.

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman confirmed that the site had beenhacked, and said steps would be taken to prevent such an instance in thefuture.

“Action is initiated after the hacking of MoD website ( link). The website shall be restored shortly. Needless to say, every possiblestep required to prevent any such eventuality in the future will be taken,”she said in a tweet.