The cybercrime unit of the government has revealed that the official website of the 2023 G20 Summit witnessed 16 lakh cyberattacks per minute during the two-day conference held on September 9 and 10 in India last year, the media has reported. This translates to an staggering 26,000 detected attacks per second.The website, g20.in, faced a barrage of "pings" during a widespread distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, according to officials.
According to news agency ANI, addressing the Annual Press Conference of Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, MHA Rajesh Kumar says, "...Per minute 16 lakh attacks were noted on G20 website on the day of the summit...It started soon after the website was up and it peaked during the summit..."
Kumar, CEO of the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), mentioned that the G20 website faced attacks shortly after its launch, with the peak occurring during the summit when there was heightened interest in accessing official documents and declarations from leaders and multilateral organisations.
He, however, refrained from disclosing specifics about the attackers or the locations from which the attacks originated. He emphasised that such details fall within the purview of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN).
An investigation points to the involvement of multiple groups from Pakistan and Indonesia in executing attacks during the G20 summit on September 9 and 10 last year, says a report by Indian Express, citing sources.
What Is A DDoS Attack
A Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack inundates websites with overwhelming traffic, typically through the use of automated bots. Consequently, the servers of these sites struggle to handle the increased load, rendering them inaccessible to intended users.