Today’s battlefields are not just about bullets and bombs, they have also expanded to cyber attacks. After the Pahalgam terror attack, the tension between India and Pakistan has spread to the digital realm, where sponsored hacker groups have launched several major cyber attacks. According to Yashasvi Yadav, Additional Director General of Police, Maharashtra Cyber Department, there have been over 10 lakh cyber attacks on India since the Pahalgam attack. This increase is not limited to government and military targets. According to Dheeraj Gupta, co-founder of cyber fraud detection firm MfilterIt, social media bots and malicious advertisements are being increasingly used to shape the narrative and spread chaos. In the first week of this May alone, there has been a 10-15% increase in malicious ad placements on OTT and social media platforms, and 70% of their customers have been affected by misleading ads. I had written about various cyber warfare tactics used by enemy state entities in two articles earlier. You can read them on my bilingual blog www.cybermithra.in.
After the Army, Navy and Air Force, state-sponsored cyber attack and defense forces are now considered part of the fourth dimension of warfare. In many countries, including India, cyber defense and offensive attack groups/organizations work for their national interest. It is common news in the cybersecurity space that North Korea has the most powerful state-sponsored cyber attack force that conducts cyber attacks, cyber warfare, corporate and industrial cyber extortion. Pakistan, along with its own cyber attack groups, can use cyber attack groups from friendly countries like North Korea, China and Turkey for its nefarious purposes, as seen in the recent attack on an Indian government unit, where the attack appeared to come from a North Korean server but the underlying payment went to a Pakistani unit, which suggests who was behind the attack.
Major recent cyber attacks by Pakistan on India post Pahalgham attack :-
- In the last week of April, the websites of Army Public School (APS) in Srinagar, Army Welfare Housing Organisation (AWHO) in Ranikhet and the Indian Air Force Recruitment Agency portal were hacked and the landing page was changed. Pakistan-based hacker groups ‘Cyber Group HOAX1337’ and ‘National Cyber Crew’ have claimed responsibility for these attacks.
- In the first week of May, the website of Armoured Vehicle Nigam Limited was hacked and the image of an Indian tank on the homepage was replaced with a Pakistani tank.
- Pakistan-based hacker group APT36 (also known as Transparent Tribe) has been found to be deploying advanced malware like Crimsonrat and MeshAgent on Indian organizations’ devices through sophisticated phishing attacks to steal sensitive data and control critical infrastructure.
- Armed forces personnel are being called by Pakistani intelligence agents from unknown numbers in the name of their relatives, friends, school/college teachers and government officials to collect their location and other sensitive details.
Major counter-cyber attacks carried out by India on Pakistan recently :-
- India has not been silent and here are some of the various attacks they have carried out that have been publicly reported.
- Pro-India hacktivist group ‘India Cyber Force’ has claimed to have hacked websites and databases of Pakistani government and private sector companies like Euro Oil, AJK Supreme Court, Balochistan University, WADA Call Agency and Sindh Police.
- The same group has announced that it has hacked more than 1000 surveillance CCTV cameras across Pakistan and posted their images on its Twitter/Ex handle.