Over the last two months, serious security intrusions were reported in government networks of Germany, USA, UK, France and New Zealand.
India is now gearing up to the new digital reality: cyber wars
NEW DELHI: Here’s a vision 2020 no one wants to talk about. An unknown hacker attacks the national power grid and manages to black out entire north India and messes with our cellular networks. No one knows what is going on.
The prime minister comes on TV. Emergency is declared. India is under a cyber attack.
Over the last two months, serious security intrusions were reported in government networks of Germany, USA, UK, France and New Zealand.
India is swallowing the bitter truth — if the future is digital, then the wars of the future will be virtual.
It’s all networking
“If you’re going to progress, you need connected networks. If you have connected networks, you better be prepared for attacks,” says a scientist working with the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO).
NTRO is a premier scientific organisation that was set up in 2003 after India was first exposed to the cyber arsenal maintained by the United States of America. On the drawing board, NTRO was ideated as an agency that would focuses on technical intelligence, surveillance and secures the security of key networks in India maintained by BARC, DRDO and ISRO.
The NTRO’s activities include aviation and remote sensing, data gathering and processing, cyber security, crypto systems, strategic hardware and software development and strategic monitoring. The NTRO has under its umbrella the National Institute of Cryptology Research, National Information Infrastructure Protection Centre, Disaster Recovery Centre and aerospace and remote sensing centres.
The NTRO has its own share of woes. “It’s easy for hackers to break into certain systems in India because the government has not felt the need to secure every system,” said an official privy to NTRO operations.
India’s very own carnivore
High on India’s list of priority is to develop indigenous tools for cyber warfare and intelligence. Like Carnivore. A system implemented by the FBI, it’s analogous to wiretapping that sniffs email and other online communications.
Once installed with the ISP, the system could sniff out any email message and save a copy of its content. Soon after 9/11 when US began sharing intelligence, the intelligence community was brought face-to-face with tools of US cyber counter-intelligence. One such tool was the Carnivore.
“The other was the Magic Lantern,” recalls a retired official of the R&AW. Magic Lantern is a keystroke logger. “Unlike keystroke logger programmes used by various agencies, Magic Lantern could reportedly be installed remotely via an email attachment or by exploiting system flaws,” said the official.
While tools like these generate intelligence over a long term and strengthen the strategic outlook of a nation, they cannot be deployed as tools in active network warfare - the one waged on India and some countries by suspected Chinese hackers.
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