Chinese hacker group Suckfly will hit India hard- Are we prepared?

New Delhi, June 13: For the second time in three months, India has issued a red alert against cyber attacks intended to damage the Indian economy.

This time too the threat to India persists from the Chinese group Suckfly. The group which had stolen digital certificates from South Korean software firms is now prying on targets in India.

In March this year Suckfly had targeted India with its custom malware Backdoor.Nidiran.

An investigation conducted by Symantec had revealed that in the India the targets were one of India's largest financial organizations, a large e-commerce compan, the e-commerce company's primary shipping vendor, one of India's top five IT firms, a United States healthcare provider's Indian business uni and two government organizations.

Big attacks:
In the investigation that Symantec conducted, it was found that Suckfly had hit one government organisation responsible for implementing network software for different ministries and departments within India's central government.

It was found that the high infection rate in this target was because of its access to technology and information related to other Indian government organisations.

Symantec found that on April 22 2015 that Suckfly had exploited a vulnerability on the targeted employee's operating system (Windows) that allowed the attackers to bypass the User Account Control and install the Nidiran back door to provide access for their attack.

Need for the tri-service cyber command:
With China looking to up the ante against India on the cyber space, India is in desperate need for the tri-service cyber command. This had been proposed nearly three years back, but is yet to see the light of the day.

The tri-service command was proposed in the wake of several attacks on the defence in which computers had been breached and sensitive information leaked.

The army, navy and the air force chiefs had recommended the need for three new unified commands to handle critical arenas of space, cyber space and clandestine warfare. The three services have their own space and cyber cells.

It was however decided that there was a need for a unified command and command structure so that the capabilities are used in a cost effective manner without turf wars. Moreover it would also deal with the cyber threat to the forcesn in a unified manner.

While the setting up of the tri service command was gaining speed last year, things however slowed down.

The government in the interim is planning the creation of the defence cyber agency.

However the experts argue looking at the magnitude of the threat posed by Chinese hackers such as Suckfly, the formation of the defence cyber agency would not be sufficient.

OneIndia News