Cyber Terrorism in India

Cyber Terrorism is the global issue which is mostly ignored in India. India, which is moving toward the will to become Global Super Power having rivals like China and Pakistan should also focus on cyber terrorism. On the other hand china who have worlds largest number of hackers is very well aware of the importance of cyber army. Yes, China is building their cyber army. India also ranks 8th in number of hackers in the world. but we still are far behind from the China. Worlds 41% of the cyber traffic have their roots to China. Now the future of the war is cyber war. Everyone knows about it. America, Russia, Turkey are also having largest hackers in the world.

What is Cyber Terrorism?

Definition: Cyberterrorism is the use of the Internet to conduct violent acts that result in, or threaten, the loss of life or significant bodily harm, in order to achieve political or ideological gains through threat or intimidation. Acts of deliberate, large-scale disruption of computer networks, especially of personal computers attached to the Internet by means of tools such as computer viruses, computer worms, phishing, malicious software, hardware methods, programming scripts can all be forms of internet terrorism. It is the future of the war.

Examples of Cyber Terrorism:

1. Introduction of viruses to vulnerable data networks.

2. Hacking of military servers to disrupt communication and steal sensitive information.

3. Defacing websites and making them inaccessible to the general public thereby causing inconvenience and financial losses.

4. Hacking communication platforms to intercept or stop communications and make terror threats using the internet.

5. Attacks on financial institutions to transfer money and cause terror.

Cyber-Espionage

Cyber espionage, or cyber spying, is a type of cyberattack in which an unauthorized user attempts to access sensitive or classified data or intellectual property (IP) for economic gain, competitive advantage or political reasons. It is executed to extract classified information from the government and other crucial organisations. Cyber-espionage cases are intensifying, where cyber-enabled illegal abstraction of data, intellectual properties (IPs) and trade secrets worth billions of dollars is being accomplished. Besides being inexpensive and easy to commit, cyber-espionage is hard to prove with certitude. The most gripping instance of cyber-espionage in India was the hacking of Prime Minister’s Office website in 2011 and the breach of 12,000 sensitive email accounts of government officials in 2012. Overseas Indian missions have also reported several instances of cyberattacks.

Cyber Threats to India

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Cyber experts across the world continuously warned about the Cyber attack threat to India. Cyber terrorism in india is handled well. Former Indian President and Missile Man Dr. Abdul kalam has also alarmed India about the threats of the Cyber Terrorism in his 2005 lecture. More than 1.1 million cyber attacks were reported across India in 2020. This was a significant increase compared to the previous year's nearly 400 thousand. The country was amongst the top five with the most number of cyber security incidents that year. Furthermore, India's ranked third in terms of internet user numbers.

So, how is India handling this issue? cyber security is relevant not only for securing India’s digital infrastructure but also for the larger transformation of India as could be seen in the development of Co-Win platform for vaccination. And finally, India has been taking steps, such as creating agencies, developing doctrines, training government employees and pursuing diplomatic collaborations with like-minded strategic partners, to ensure that deficiencies in the cyber security domain could be addressed. However, much more needs to be done to tackle cyber terrorism as national security will hinge increasingly on cyber security. India needs to build defensive and more importantly, offensive cyber capabilities while pushing for the creation of governing norms and frameworks for the use of cyberspace.

Also, India is discussing a plan to create so-called power islanding systems in several cities to protect critical infrastructure from potential attacks on the electricity grid. The plan follows a major power outage in India’s financial hub Mumbai last year that brought the city to a halt and prompted speculation about a cyber attack. The year before, the country’s nuclear power monopoly reported computer systems at one of its generation plants had been attacked by malware. Power grids in the world are increasingly digitalized, leaving them vulnerable to such attacks. Islanding systems feature generation capacity and can isolate automatically from the main grid in the event of an outage.