12th-fail Gujarat teen arrested for over 50 cyberattacks during Operation Sindoor

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Gujarat ATS on Monday arrested a teenager from Nadiad for allegedly carrying out cyber attacks on more than 50 Indian govt websites between April and May 2025, according to The Times of India. He was arrested following intelligence inputs received during surveillance operations.

ATS officials said that probe revealed that 18-year-old Jasim Shahnawaz Ansari intensified attacks after India's Operation Sindoor was launched in retaliation to the Pahalgam terror attack.

These attacks aimed to bring down websites by overwhelming them with traffic. These included websites related to defence, finance, aviation, urban development, and several state govts.

The officials further revealed that used online platforms like YouTube to learn Python programming, and downloaded cyber-attack tools from GitHub. These tools were used through apps like Termux and Pydroid to execute the DDoS attacks.

Additionally, Ansari and his associates created a Telegram group named AnonSec, where they discussed and executed DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks.

"He later verified the success of the attacks using checkhost.net and shared screenshots in the AnonSec group along with anti-India messages such as ‘Hi, India we just took down your shield and servers," said a release from the ATS.

"Ansari, along with like-minded juveniles, launched cyberattacks using various handles and changed group names frequently. They spread anti-national propaganda by posting about successful attacks," it added.

On May 7, 2025, 20 govt websites were targeted and messages like "India may have started it, but we will be the ones to finish it" were posted on their group, said ATS officers.

Officials said that Ansari failed in class-12 science recently and another juvenile, aged 17, is in class-12. They are investigating whether the accused acted independently or were influenced by foreign entities.

Further examination of the tools, software, and digital links is ongoing and they are trying to get digital footprints in the case.