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WAR IN CYBERSPACE
Indian Express
May 31, 2002

Pakistan is not restricting itself to pushing terrorists across the border to India. It is active in other manners, both overtly and covertly, to cause disturbances in India. Some of the overt means are the fanning of communal tension across the country and training terrorists from regions as far as Northeast India. Among the covert activities, it has most significantly started supporting and funding groups involved in cyber attacks on Indian networks. Such cyber attacks have been directed against the Indian government and corporate networks. These cyber attacks get intensified when the physical skirmishes and tensions escalate between the two nations. During the Pokharan nuclear blasts in 1998 and the Kargil conflict in 1999, many such attacks were witnessed. These attacks have stayed and increased in incidence and vigor ever since.

The present tensions could also have renewed attacks from Pakistani cyber forces. How concerned and prepared are we to thwart such attempts? Just after September 11, the Institute for Security Technological Studies at Dartmouth College, USA, issued a predictive analysis paper which dwelt on the possibility of cyber attacks in the context of the War against Terrorism. In that Analysis, it has been mentioned that cyber conflicts immediately accompany physical attacks. This trend has been witnessed in many of the existing conflicts in the world and the India-Pakistan cyber conflict was also shaping up quite steadily.

Cyber incursions by Pakistan on Indian networks has been on for sometime now. Since the introduction of the Internet in Pakistan, there has been enough instances of false and misleading propaganda by Pakistan-based and Pakistan-supported groups against India through various websites. Most of these initial offensives were vituperative campaigns against India and a few sites used to post morphed pictures showing brutality by Indian soldiers to incite sentiments. After the 1988 vandalism of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) website and critical data stolen, ISI understood the advantage of the virtual space and emerging tactics and started funding a few select group of hackers. Since then efforts have been more organised and today there are regular attempts on the key Indian nuclear research institutions like the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), Nuclear Science Centre (NSC) and BARC to break past the firewalls.

Cyberspace happens to be the domain of conflict where no casualties and exchange of fire take place. Hence, it is a non-risky job for many of the activist groups. While psychological advantage could be perceived by staging such attacks, the overall impact of an actual terrorist strike can never be realised. Thus the direct use of cyber tactics by the Pakistani Army and ISI is ruled out. Unlike China, which is building up a fourth arsenal totally consisting of cyber warriors, there is no credible belief to suggest Pakistan is also contemplating such a step.

Most of the Pakistani cyber attacks today are from hacker activist groups, organised and unorganised in their design of execution. Some of these groups are Anti India Crew (AIC), G-Force, Pakistan Hackerz Club (PHC), Kill India and Death to India. There have been reports of Osama bin Laden funding some of these groups. The Canadian CERT had issued warnings of such influenced attacks last year.

Till date no lasting damages have been done, although the hacking of BARC website and the subsequent stealing of sensitive data have raised concerns. The hacking of the Central Board of Excise and Customs website carried out in April this year by AIC by giving sufficient notice and challenging patriot hackers from India to prevent such an attack is worrisome.

The reported clubbing of the three main anti-India hacker groups, AIC, G-Force and PHC, as a coalition under the banner 'Al-Qaeda Muslim' needs to be taken seriously by India. While G-Force targets websites with massive readerships, AIC focuses on government networks and PHC attacks the bigger names and networks, including those of large corporate houses.

Most of the cyber attacks by these Pakistani forces are carried out by planting deadly viruses, inflicting denial of service attacks, hacking into websites, snooping into e-mails, stealing confidential scientific and strategic data and posting malicious mails and propaganda.

It is imperative to assess the threat perspective and do a risk analysis of all such possible cyber attacks on the Indian networks, particularly in the face of our extreme dependence on cyber infrastructures in the day-to-day government and business functioning. Protection of our critical infrastructures has to be seriously understood and defence mechanisms need to be in place.

While there are separate efforts by the Army and respective government networks to secure themselves, considering the regular threats, such defence mechanisms should be organised under one command and the National Security Council should be entrusted the role.

While firewalls, anti-intrusion software and anti-virus products are available commercially for protection, these versions are not always effective in the face of such organised attacks. Moreover, most of the latest versions of these US products are embargoed for countries like ours till a reasonable period of time. This is quite surprising and under the newly formed Indo-US Joint Task Force on cyber terrorism, this matter should be resolved and recent software and services made available for the Indian government. The recent visit by the US team under Lincoln Bloomfield, Chair of the President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure has spelled out the need for effective co-operation between the two nations to combat cyber attacks. This could be an immediate step to set the partnership rolling.

It is pertinent to mention that many of these Pakistani cyber groups have hacked into the US critical sites by even using Taiwan-based computer systems as platforms recently. The present situation raises many questions about attacks and false propaganda by Pakistan using the cyberspace.

While anti-cyber attack technologies have improved significantly, hackers have also matured and become organised. In the absence of international laws to punish such transnational cyber attackers and the surreptitious belligerence of the Pakistani forces in the cyberspace, the best possible answer is to remain vigilant and ready.

The writer is vice-president, Argus, and chairman, Task Force on Cyber Security, Assocham, India