China Launches A Wave Of Attacks On India

As tensions increases between China and India increase following a recent deadly  border clash, the Chinese governmnet has been accusedof launching cyberattacks on media outlets across India and a powerful Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack on Indian information websites.

There is significant increase in incidents relating to hacking, injecting malware through spam mails and other forms of exploiting vulnerabilities. 

India is among the top 10 countries facing significant cyber-attacks. These incidents have increased manifold during the lockdown period, almost three times increase in cases of phishing, spamming and scanning of ICT systems, particularly of critical information infrastructure and financial institutions.

According to cyber intelligence firms, there's been an increased chatter on dark web forums in Mandarin demanding that "India be taught a lesson". In times of strife, Pakistani hackers too target Indian sites.A recent report claimed that after the face-off between the Indian and the Chinese troops in the Galwan valley along the LAC in Ladakh, India must brace itself for a spell of cyberattacks from Chinese hacker groups. 

While the threat may be real, the pattern is not. India is one of the top five most-targeted countries online and most of these cyberattacks originate from six countries mainly namely China, Russia, Pakistan, Ukraine, Vietnam and North Korea.

According to a Indian Governmnet sources  phishing and social engineering attacks account for most of these attacks, followed by malware, spear-phishing, DDoS and ransomware.

CCOVID-19-themed phishing emails targeted manufacturing, finance, transportation, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. Attacks on banking, defence and manufacturing sectors.  PWC India report that Indian organisations have seen attacks almost double between 17 and 20 February, with a 66% increase in detections by endpoint security systems in March 2020 and a 100% increase in brute force attacks in March on exposed network systems.

PWC India have  estimated that data breaches have cost organisations in India  between $100 million to $200 million per year, while in 2019, the average cost of data breaches in India stood at $119 million. 

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