China Deploying Cyber Warfare Arsenal Against India

China's increasing cyber warfare is causing serious trouble to India's national security over the past 18 months or so. Driven by a compelling desire to gain 'electronic dominance' over India, Chinese hackers are increasingly and repeatedly attacking numerous important Indian Websites. The attacks happen to come on an almost daily basis, affecting both private and government Websites of India, as reported by IndiaPost on June 24, 2008.

According to the statistics provided in the news, security firm said that the Chinese hackers defaced almost 143 Indian Websites in October 2007 through phishing attacks. Security researchers have defined phishing as a fraudulent Internet activity, where hackers use bogus emails to lure unsuspecting users to reveal their personal financial information like bank account number, password and credit card details, which is then used to do illegitimate activities and scams.

As per the details released about hacking incidents, until October 2007, nearly 61% cases accounted to phishing attempts and 27% cases involved unauthorized scanning, while 8% of the incidents were related to worms/viruses under the malware category.

Related reports suggested that India is facing a similar scenario as the western countries are facing, a massive increase in phishing attempts. phishing incidents were 180% higher in 2006 than in 2005, and the trend carried through 2007 too.

The news reports revealed that the Website defacement cases during August 2007 through phishing was numbered at 345. But, in 2008, the months of February and March recorded a massive rise in number of defaced Websites clocking at 858 and 738 respectively. phishing attacks and similar spoofing methods were employed to cause this disaster.

Reports suggested that cyber attacks from China are considered a security breach by other countries, but India equates them with cyber terrorist attacks. Cyber security experts revealed that the Chinese cyber attacks have also created 50,000 bots, another security threat in India.

The Chief of Indian Army, General Deepak Kapoor, said that they have beefed up security levels of their information networks, and the Army Cyber Security Establishment has begun periodic audits of cyber-security, as reported by IndiaPost on June 24, 2008.

Related article: China’s Best Initiatives To Deal With Spam

» SPAMfighter News - 7/14/2008