China behind recent hack attacks, says Indian government

The Times of India has accusedChinese hackers, allegedly backed by the Chinese government, ofsystematically attacking Indian online assets over the past 18 months.The goal of these assaults, at least according to the paper, is to mapand discover weak points within India's IT infrastructure. Suchinformation could give China an advantage in any potential conflict,and the article implies that India has been slow to develop aretalitory system in the event of a Chinese attack.

Related Stories

Science ethics and the developing world

The degree to which the Chinese government is actually involved in these attacks is still an open question, The Times'rhetoric notwithstanding. A continuing series of sophisticated andmethodical assaults is no longer proof of another nation's malevolentintent, even if such attacks appear to be originating in the country inquestion. The same market forces responsible for the commercializationof the malware industry across the globe promote sophisticated attackvectors and a methodical approach to security probes. So the hackersbehind the intrusion attempts that Indian IT workers are detecting areessentially cyber-casing the country's digital joint, and while theymay be working for the Chinese government they could also just be outto make a buck.

The problem with accusing other countries of attacking one's owncybersecurity systems is that, at least to date, such accusationshaven't proven particularly accurate. As we coveredin January, a series of cyber attacks that the Estonian governmentinitially blamed on the Russian government actually turned out to bethe work of a disgruntled student hacker. The incident did no permanentdamage to Russian-Estonian relations, but it did cause a temporarydiplomatic cooling between the two countries over a set of allegationsthat the Russians vehemently—and apparently truthfully—denied.
Sino-Indian relations are probably better, on the whole, thanEstonian-Russian relations, but the two burgeoning powers have hadtheir share of conflicts, including a brief war in 1962. Since the1980s, however, the relationship between China and India has generallygrown stronger. China recognized Indian sovereignty over the disputedstate of Sikkim in 2003, and the two country's jointly reopened theNathula Pass in 2006, which had been closed since the aforementionedSino-Indian War of 1962.

India's relatively friendly relationship with China may have grown abit more tense of late thanks to the recent Chinese crackdown in Tibet.India is home to the largest group of Tibetan refugees in the world,including the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile. The cybersecurityattacks India detected aren't directly related to the Tibetanriots—evidence indicates that they've been occurring for at least ayear—but the government's decision to release such information at atime when China is under enormous scrutiny is hardly accidental.
The Times notes that "cyber warfare is yet to become a bigcomponent of India’s security doctrine." Even in the US the military'srole in cybersecurity is still in its relative infancy; India is butone of many countries in the process of evaluating how cybersecurity(and cyber warfare) impact its safety.