The website of the Ministry of Defence was hacked some Chinese characters on home page

The website of the Ministry of Defence was hacked on Friday evening. The mod.gov.in website displayed an error message and carried what seemed to be some Chinese characters on top, sparking speculation of a cyber attack from the northern neighbor.

News agency PTI has quoted officials to confirm that the website had gone down as a result of a hack. However, the usual markers of a hit by a group of hackers was missing. Hacked government websites usually end up displaying some embarrassing political message, along with the hackers' group claiming responsibility. The MoD website hack featured none of these.

Efforts to visit the MoD website around



3:30 pm showed a message that read, "The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later." Online translation services suggested that the apparently Chinese symbols meant either 'not early' or 'home'.

Soon afterwards, even this error message stopped showing and attempts to visit the website ended up with a message that read, "This site can't be reached."

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman responded on Twitter. However, she merely acknowledged that the website was down, and divulged no information. "Issue with the MoD website ( http://mod.nic.in  ) has been taken note of. Appropriate action has been initiated," read her tweet.