A fake image took the social media by storm when someone posted a screenshot of the HEC website mentioning that HEC has canceled all university exams. Eduvision team analyzed the image and was the first one to report that the image is fake. A detailed post can be found here. HEC website was down due to load issues. Many students were visiting the HEC website and its server could not bear the burden of requests being made to access the website data.
But now it is also being assumed that the HEC website was hacked. A TV channel also broke the news of the HEC website being hacked. Students are making fun of HEC that they cannot secure their own website and are appreciating the "Hacker". But was it really HACKED? The answer is no.
Someone who took a screenshot made a few changes on the downloaded page of the HEC website. There was no change in the online version of the page; hence it cannot truly be regarded as a HACKED website. In technical terms, a website is hacked only when someone gets access to the online server of a website, or an online version of any page of the website. But in this case, changes were seemed to be made on the downloaded version of the page.
To understand what really happened, let's assume that you download a picture or a Word document from a website. When it is downloaded to your computer, you can make any changes to it. Right. Is this hacking? Definitely not. The same is the case with the HTML version of a webpage. When you type a web address of a page, the request is sent to the server, the server renders the required page to your browser and when it is displayed, the page is fully downloaded on your local computer.
Now you can make any changes to the pages, change its text, color, picture, or whatever you want. But changes stay on your computer, not on the online version of the page. That is what the so called "HACKER" did, and by changing the code on his/her own computer he/she had to take a picture of the page to show it to others. This cannot be regarded as HACKING the website.
