new Delhi . Ukraine’s government is waging a ‘hybrid war’ where Russia is attacking its internet network while ground forces attack infrastructure and major cities. India is also highly vulnerable to large-scale direct and indirect cyber attacks from its border countries Pakistan and China.
According to Harvard University’s ‘National Cyber Power Index’, China ranks second in cyber power globally.
India’s first Chief of Defense Staff (CDS), the late General Bipin Rawat, warned last year that Chinese cyber attacks could disrupt a large number of systems and paralyze critical defense and military infrastructure in the country.
According to experts, India’s offensive capabilities and cyber security are not foolproof in the event of launching large-scale DDoS or ransomware attacks.
New Delhi-based cyber law expert Virag Gupta told -AnyTV News: “Chinese hackers often disrupt services and target National Informatics Center (NIC), National Security Council, security agencies and various government departments. Telecom, power, With the media heavily dependent on China and the US for transportation, power, communications, fintech and social media, India is vulnerable to direct and indirect cyber attacks.
Over 11.5 lakh incidents of cyber attacks were tracked and reported to India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) in 2021.
According to official estimates, there has been a 120 percent increase in ransomware attacks in India.
India was among the top three countries that experienced the most server access and ransomware attacks in Asia last year. Server access attacks (20 percent) and ransomware (11 percent) were the top two types of attacks, followed by data theft (10 percent), according to researchers from IBM’s X-Force Threat Intelligence team.
Cyber security firm Kaspersky’s ‘Cyber Threats to Financial Organization in 2022’ report states that India is one of the top five targets of cyber attacks in the Asia Pacific region, especially APT (Advanced Persistent Threats) cyber attacks that are aimed at cyber security. take advantage of the gap in the , and go undetected for a long time.
The findings reflect the expansion of India’s cyber threat zone, which is primarily dominated by infiltration attacks from Pakistan and China.
In recent years, Pakistan and China have deepened their cooperation in the IT sector.
According to experts, any serious cyber attack can have the same effect as a natural disaster, destroy essential infrastructure and cause widespread distress.
Gupta lamented that the state and central government officials are not complying with the statutory provisions of the Public Records Act, leading to huge data vulnerabilities and security risks. There is no clarity on various regulators and state police’s cyber cells are more time dependent on private people and consultants to solve cyber crime and fraud cases.
The China-Pakistan collusion has become a reality where Pakistan has emerged as a proxy for China-backed threat actors.
In 2019, there was a huge increase in cyber attacks on Indian institutions after the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35-A, changing the special status of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.
In July 2019, Parliament was informed that by May, more than 24 websites of central ministries, departments and state governments had been hacked.
The then IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, in a written reply in the Lok Sabha, said that there were attempts to launch cyber attacks on Indian cyberspace, and these attacks were seen to originate from several countries including China and Pakistan.
Global Research and Analysis Team (GREAT) APAC, Kaspersky told -AnyTV News, “India needs to be more careful to protect its websites and critical infrastructure, especially when there are cyber attackers who are in the name of cyber warfare between countries. But we are ready to take advantage of our weaknesses.”
—AnyTV News
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