On Sunday evening, over a hundred Pakistani websites including official government portals such as pakistan.gov.pk, president.gov.pk and cabinet.gov.pk. were hacked. Later, a group called "Mallu Cyber Soldiers" took the credit for the feat, saying that it was a payback for crashing the official portal of the Kerala Government.
Just like the world-famous Anonymous hacktivists, "Mallu Cyber Soldiers" is also an online gathering of security experts. The vigilantes work toward protecting Indian websites from getting hacked.
In an interview with IB Times India, a "Mallu Cyber Soldiers" member, operating under the alias Ruben King, opened up about who they are and what their goals are.
"There is a big cyber war going on between India and Pakistan. Our main aim is to secure Indian websites from getting hacked. We also help recover defaced portals and inform the admins of those sites about the vulnerability and how they can be fixed," he said.
[Read more: 'Mallu Cyber Soldiers' retaliates by hacking Pakistan government websites]
Mallu Cyber Soldiers made their first appearance about a year ago in October 2014, when Pakistani hackers broke into Malayalam actor Mohanlal's official blog.
"We warned them (hackers from Pakistan) not to touch Kerala-based sites after Mohanlal's blog was hacked back in 2014," Ruben said. "We are really angry about what happened to the Kerala Government website. We defaced Pakistani websites mainly because they deserve it."
When asked whether the group would come forward to work with the Central or State governments, Ruben said that they prefer their anonymity. "Like I said, our main goal is to keep India and its citizens safe, so we would like to remain anonymous. By doing this, we can also expose those Indians who are against their motherland," he added.
Like Ruben, other members of Mallu Cyber Soldiers also like to hide behind aliases such as Tintumon KB, Poison Operator, Indcode, Levin Freaky, Ooken Rakesh, Jojo Jojo, Spamesh Hackie, Lokkimon and Adu Thoma.
