Recent Cyber Attacks & India's Cyber Security Agencies

• Recently, the Union Power Ministry said that State-sponsored Chinese hacker groups targeted various Indian power centres.
• India has been attacked by suspected Chinese state-sponsored groups multiple times in the past.
• In 2009, a suspected cyber espionage network dubbed GhostNet was found to be targeting the Tibetan government in exile in India, and many Indian embassies.
• There were a number of subsequent attacks that targeted India. Such as:
  • Stuxnet had also taken down nuclear reactors in Iran.
  • Suckfly, targeted not just government but also private entities including a firm that provided tech support to the National Stock Exchange.
  • Dtrack which first targeted Indian banks, and later the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in 2019.

• Documents released by WikiLeaks show that groups such as the CIA’s UMBRAGE project have advanced capabilities of carrying false flag attacks.

Institutional security:

• The National Security Council, chaired by the National Security Adviser (NSA), plays a key role in shaping India’s cyber policy ecosystem.
• The NSA also chairs the National Information Board, which is meant to be the apex body for cross-ministry coordination on cybersecurity policymaking.
• The National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre established under the National Technical Research Organisation in January 2014 was mandated to facilitate the protection of critical information infrastructure.
• In 2015, the Prime Minister established the office of the National Cyber Security Coordinator who advises the Prime Minister on strategic cybersecurity issues.
• India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), which is the nodal entity responding to various cybersecurity threats to non-critical infrastructure comes under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY).
• The Ministry of Defence has recently upgraded the Defence Information Assurance and Research Agency to establish the Defence Cyber Agency, a tri-service command of the Indian armed forces to coordinate and control joint cyber operations and craft India’s cyber doctrine.
• The Ministry of Home Affairs oversees multiple coordination centres that focus on law enforcement efforts to address cybercrime, espionage and terrorism.
• The Ministry of External Affairs coordinates India’s cyber diplomacy push, both bilaterally with other countries, and at international fora like the United Nations.

Types of Cyber Crimes

• Stalking: Cyberstalking is the use of the Internet or other electronic means to stalk someone
• Hacking - is a crime, which entails cracking systems and gaining unauthorized access to the data stored in them
• Phishing - refers to the receipt of unsought emails by customers of financial institutions, asked them to enter their username, password or other personal information to access their account for some reason.
• Squatting - is the act of registering a famous domain name and then selling it for a fortune
• Software Piracy - is the illegal reproduction and distribution of software for business or personal use. This is considered to be a type of infringement of copyright and a violation of a license agreement
• Cyber pornography - includes pornographic websites; pornographic magazines produced using computers (to publish and print the material) and the Internet (to download and transmit pornographic pictures, photos, writings etc).
• Cyber-terrorism - is the adaptation of terrorism to computer resources, whose purpose is to cause fear in its victims by attacking electronic resources
• Cyber Defamation - occurs when defamation takes place with the help of computers and/or the Internet. E.g. someone publishes defamatory matter about someone on a website or sends e-mails containing defamatory information to all of that person's friends