It’s a proxy war like never before. Following the violent face-off in Galwan Valley on the disputed stretch of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between Indian Army and Chinese troops which led to both sides suffering heavy casualties, China has now launched a cyber war against India.
Just days after Indian security agencies warned of massive cyber attacks, Chinese hackers have launched an all out offensive and made over 40,300 cyber attacks on India in the last five days. The attacks have been primarily targeted on IT, infra and banking sectors.
Maharashtra’s Cyber Security Cell has now put on record how Chinese state backed hackers are targeting various sectors in India. A large volume of these attacks have originated from China’s Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province.
The attacks, according to the police, can be broad based into three categories: denial of service, Internet Protocol hijacking and phishing which has led to the Indian government’s cyber infrastructure being vulnerable at the moment.
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Intelligence agencies had earlier issued advisories and said that many India users could receive an email from ncovid2019@gov.in which is essentially a bait to steal financial and personal data. Users have been advised against opening or downloading attachments from this email ID which would eventually lead users to fraudulent websites working towards data theft.
The well-calibrated cyber attacks on India’s critical infrastructure are reportedly using malware designed to communicate with China-based Command and Control servers. Experts say crypto miners and Remote Access Tool (RAT) malware are being dropped on users’ computers, facilitating remote administration. Screen capture, keylogging and data data exfiltration modes are being used as a part of these orchestrated and remote controlled cyber attacks.
What is a further cause of worry is that using honey-trapping as a means to get vital and classified information, Pakistani hacker collective APT36 has also been on the job of targeting Indian Defence establishments since March.
Incidentally, agencies have warned of further cyber attacks in the coming days.