Beijing denies hacking into computers in the Prime Minister's Office
NEW DELHI: Indian cyber sleuths detected an attempt to infiltrate the computers in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) by hackers believed to be in China. Beijing says it had nothing to do with the intrusion.
This is not the first time hackers have tried to attack Indian government computers, people with knowledge of the developments said.
PMO computers were hacked on Dec 15 with a Trojan virus that was routed through the United States and Russia but was ultimately traced to an IP address on the mainland, officials said, confirming a report in the Mail Today last week.
The virus also briefly penetrated some computers in the National Security Council secretariat in the Home Ministry before it was detected and erased.
'These things happen all the time and this is why we have an expert from the National Information Centre stationed full-time in the PMO,' said a senior official in the Indian establishment.
'Our Cert teams are up to the task,' he added, referring to the government's Computer Emergency Response Team.
National Security Adviser M.K. Nara-yanan confirmed the cyber attack in an interview with The Times of London published on Monday.
'People seem to be fairly sure it was the Chinese,' he told the newspaper. 'It is difficult to find the exact source but this main suspicion seems well founded.'
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu rejected India's accusations, describing them as groundless.
He said China itself was the 'biggest victim' of hacking activities.
'The Chinese government is firmly against hacking activities and will deal with relevant cases in accordance with the law,' he said.
The cyber attack on the PMO, which matched similar attempts to infiltrate computers in the US at the same time, was probably timed to fish out information on India's likely positions ahead of the climate change summit in Copenhagen, key officials here surmised.
They said there was no security breach. They also cautioned against overplaying its dimensions or projecting it as a sign of growing hostility between the two Asian giants, which have an unresolved boundary issue dating back five decades.
'Every major power in the world has a cyber warfare arm or is developing one,' said an Indian official with close knowledge of the issue.
'The Americans are the masters of the craft, followed by the Russians and the Israelis. The Chinese are huge too but they can sometimes be haphazard and get caught.'
The official said Chinese hackers had been caught earlier too, attempting to break into Indian government computers and the computers of Ministry of External Affairs personnel worldwide.
Indian intelligence experts say the strength of the Chinese cyber warfare arm first came to notice shortly after the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999. Two Chinese were killed in that attack.
'US websites were subjected to a wave of cyber attacks by the Chinese hacking community in retaliation,' the intelligence official said. 'Today, in our estimate, the size of the Chinese government's cyber arm may be of division strength. Besides, there must be thousands more non-state hackers.'
Indian officials say one reason the Chinese have such a huge cyber arm is the fear of asymmetrical warfare, particularly with Taiwan.
'The Taiwanese are very advanced technologically and the Chinese know it,' the official said. 'We live in a world where a guy sitting in South Africa can knock out a sewage system in Sydney by hacking computers. And Beijing fears Taiwan can knock out many of its systems should things ever go out of control.'
Source: Straits Times, 20 Jan, 2010.
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