On March 2, Mysterious Team Bangladesh (MTB), a hacker group known to target India in the past, launched a new wave of cyber-attacks on a wide range of Indian websites, and dumped their data on their dark web forum as well as on their Telegram channel. The group also sent out a clarion call to all its affiliates asking them to join ‘Op India’, and by March 16, two more hacker groups, Team Insane PK (affiliated to Pakistan) and The Yemeni Ghost, had joined forces with MTB.

This is the third wave of cyber-attacks that India has witnessed in less than a year. In June 2022, DragonForce Malaysia launched an attack on Indian websites as retribution for former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma’s objectionable remarks against Prophet Mohammed. In November 2022, MTB launched its first wave of cyber-attacks. In January 2023, some Indian hacker groups formed an alliance to get back at Bangladesh, defacing the country’s websites and breaching its data. The current cyber-attack is counter-retaliation to these attacks.