Chinese hacking communities have been discussing ways to ‘teach India a lesson’ over the last 10 days on the dark web, said the Singapore-headquartered cyber security firm, with some expressing frustration, saying “this is one nation that doesn’t listen to us”. The increased chat group activity has been linked to the current border standoff between the two countries.
“The whisperings in the dark web and hackers’ forums have increased in volume and intensity with actual mentions of Indian targets,” said Kumar Ritesh, Founder-CEO of Cyfirma. “When we observed that IoCs (indicators of compromise) were shared, we immediately knew that the threat could be imminent.”
Dark web refers to that area of cyberspace where content cannot be searched using normal search engines because it is encrypted.
According to the cybersecurity firm, plans are afoot to steal sensitive data like trade secrets, launch denial of service attacks and deface websites or launch malicious phishing campaigns targeting Indian government websites and companies in the telecommunications, pharma, smartphone and construction industries.
Companies including Reliance Jio Infocomm, Bharti Airtel, L&T, Apollo Tyres, Micromax, Sun Pharma and Cipla could be targeted, along with the defence, external affairs and information and broadcasting ministries. Some media houses such as the Times of India and Hindustan Times were named as targets.
“The course of action now for these companies and government bodies is to quickly close those security gaps and vulnerabilities,” Ritesh said.
“We continuously receive inputs, including from central agencies rece ..
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