New Delhi, March 16: It has been 12 days since the official website of Bharatiya Janata Party - www.bjp.org - was allegedly hacked and it is not yet back online. The BJP website has been into the "maintenance mode" since March 5. French security researcher, who goes by the name of Elliot Alderson and who published Aadhaar data leaks in the past, on Saturday offered help to the BJP provided he made the prime minister.

"In 2019, if you choose me to be your Prime Minister, I will restore the @BJP4India website (sic)," Elliot Alderson tweeted. "And because I'm super nice, i will restore the Gujarat Congress's official website too if @UIDAI is publishing "We love Elliot Anderson" on their official Twitter (sic)," he added. Earlier, the French vigilante hacker took a dig at the BJP and claimed he knew who hacked their website. BJP Website Hacked; Abusive Words, Error Message Appear on www.bjp.org.

Elliot Alderson's tweets:

"I found who hacked the BJP website. It’s Nehru," he wrote on Twitter. Before Alderson, the Congress, too, had taken a dig at the BJP, asking if they needed any help with bringing the website back. "Morning BJP, we realise you’ve been down for a long time now. If you need help getting back up, we’re happy to help," the Congress party had written on Twitter. The message on the BJP website reads: "We'll be back soon! Sorry for the inconvenience but we're performing some maintenance at the moment. We will be back online shortly!"

On March 6, BJP's IT cell head Amit Malviya had claimed that the portal was likely to be up "by tonight or tomorrow". But it didn't happen. While admitting that the site had experienced some sort of "transgression", Malviya said that the site was down due to a "technical glitch", not hacking. According to ethical cyber hackers, a portal that is "down" for four-five days can only be in that mode if the entire coding is being done and content being generated.

"Looks like BJP is redesigning the whole website as not only the database but the entire backup is also gone - only if the daily backups were being done in the first place - hence it is taking so long for them to up the website again," Manan Shah, Founder and CEO, Avalance Global Solutions, told IANS.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 16, 2019 10:43 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).