According to statistics by the Department of Information Technology, 578 websites with .com domain were defaced in January-February 2007, the highest in any category.
The total number of 1,190 in 2007 is much higher than the corresponding two months in 2006, when only 151 websites in January and 178 websites were defaced in February 2006.
Defacement means the web content hosted on a server has been modified illegally. It need not indicate a full system compromise and is less damaging than cracking, which means the attacker may have access to other files in the system.
The .com domain was followed by 383 websites in the .in domain name, while .org domain name websites witnessed 149 defacements. The .net, .info and .name websites saw defacements in the order of 58, 20 and 2 respectively.
In February alone, 858 websites were defaced with 404 site being illegally modifed in the .com space. This is far higher than the 332 website defacements in the previous month.
