Chinese hackers target PM Office computers in India

[DKT27]

Chinese hackers target PM Office computers in India

Hackers from China have targeted computers in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO).

Headlines Today has learnt that the sinister attempt was made around December 15 last year. Investigators are still coming to terms with the depth of the damage.

The hackers had aimed high - their targets were the cream of India's national security set-up: National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan, Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrashekhar, PM's Special Envoy Shyam Saran and Deputy National Security Advisor Shekhar Dutt. The four and up to 26 others were squarely in the crosshairs of the hacking attempt.

Top sources told Headlines Today that investigators are trying hard to find out who these hackers were and whether this was a devious espionage attempt by the Chinese government itself.

When Headlines Today contacted the PMO regarding the espionage attempt, a spokesperson said no classified information had been breached, but added: "There are routine attempts to hack into various systems. The PMO has its own system in place to protect against such attempts."

A top PMO official, whose e-mail account was cracked by the Chinese hackers, confirmed the espionage bid, saying: "These kind of hacking attempts are made. To think they are not made is wrong. The internet or intranet is not used for official purposes."

According to Bharat Karnad, a strategic affairs analyst, "China wants war by all means. It doesn't believe in peacetime. For China, it's always rivals, always competition."

Pavan Duggal, chairman of Cyber Law and IT Act Committee, says: "China is very active in cyberspace. It has raised a cyber army of about 3,00,000 people and their only job is to intrude upon secured networks of other countries. All this is all aimed at supremacy. Every country must set up cyber armies to counter China."

R.S.N. Singh, a former RAW officer, says: "China wants to dominate and control this space. This cyber army has soldiers not in uniform but anybody and everybody, maybe college students. It's very serious as cyber warfare can bring a country to a crippling halt."

The timing of the espionage attempt has investigators suspecting that the Chinese hackers were desperately trying to access any data on India's position at the Copenhagen Climate Summit.

Until Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrived in Copenhagen on December 17, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh and PM's Special Envoy Shyam Saran were singing different tunes.

While Ramesh was in favour of scrapping the Kyoto Protocol, Saran was against the move. On December 15 when India's final stand was still shrouded in mystery, the Chinese hackers targeted the PMO computers.

But what has disturbed investigators the most is that the Chinese hackers quite likely had inside help. The possibility of a mole within the Indian establishment helping a foreign adversary is staring investigators in the face.

And the technology being used is preoccupying the Indian sleuths no end. The espionage attempt was highly evolved and well-researched. The mail was routed through several multi-proxy servers thus obliterating the trail.

The hacking spyware itself was embedded in a PDF document. And the trojan was programmed to carry out an array of functions, including downloading files, accessing emails and passwords and also accessing the desktop from a remote location.

Source - Headlines Today

[Night Owl]

These Chinese hackers are too much. But then again, the Internet was designed without any security in mind.

[karachidude]

lol...no comments on these comments,and gud job highliting them :D

Pavan Duggal, chairman of Cyber Law and IT Act Committee, says: "China is very active in cyberspace. It has raised a cyber army of about 3,00,000 people and their only job is to intrude upon secured networks of other countries. All this is all aimed at supremacy. Every country must set up cyber armies to counter China."

[DKT27]

Now it's just enough. Everyone, every country should step up against them. I would say we all have a bigger threat than we can think. My country borders them, I would just say it's not one of the best countries in the world.

[karachidude]

Now it's just enough. Everyone, every country should step up against them. I would say we all have a bigger threat than we can think. My country borders them, I would just say it's not one of the best countries in the world.

i have reported ur post,for suggested derrogation towards the biggest nation in the World.This place is supposed to be a multi-ethnic society.

Where are the morals.

[DKT27]

Well I just repeated what you quoted, in a simpler way. :P

[Lite]

First Russia.... Now China. It seems like every country the US dislikes it manages to launch a massive agenda against ;)

I'm pretty certain the world faces bigger threats than China.

The only thing the Chinese want is to become a super power :P Its clear India is the same - it is expanding all the same. Both countries come from a similar background.

People like to use the Media to their advantage. The media likes to use this to over hype the situation!

[karachidude]

Correct.

Its basically the West+India against the rest of the World.

[DKT27]

In a way I don't agree with you Lite.

If you'd be stayin in India you would see that Chinese guys have done, or may I say are doing their best to trouble India in addition to the whole world. From Arunachal Pradesh, that is a part of the Indian territory and known world wide as India's, is considered by China as their own. To capturing India's diamond traders in China as diamond smugglers.

India and China cannot be considered in same way at all. If India is trying to become a super power then it's because of the effort the public and the industries put in their work. On India's 60th Independence day, Time's Square had a large banner congratulating India of it and BBC quoting the way India has developed in just 60 years, does China get this praise? Whereas all I can see is China have it's own ways to make them feel that they wanna rule the world.

How about the cheap low quality products from China? Whole world's market is flooded with it. The toxic kid's toys, the brand-less mobile phones being used by terrorists for their own advantage.

World may face bigger challenges than China but how can you ignore the proven fact that most of the cybercrime is committed in China? Now what are their government doing? I've heard that Chinese govt. has strict rules against cybercrimes, so how do they manage to do that?

[HX1]

I guess we could start an intellectural boycott of the country .. block all connections to it.. Until someone gets it together. I mean I don't think its going to be much, they already censor the Internet.. Same for Korea as well.. be too bad for the ones we know who are well NOT on the 'program' with this crap though..

[karachidude]

who the F*** made America the Boss,and the F*** are they to judge,china is the fastest growing economy in the World,and someone very very stupid would say,they do not know how to run a country

[Lite]

Lots of other countries dispute borders. Does this mean we should boycott them too? The British Empire claimed lots of counties as its own. Should be boycott Britain too?

There is a massive market for cheap goods. The Chinese only manufacture items that are ordered from elsewhere. If they want to tap into this, good for them.

[DKT27]

There's no point in boycotting them fully but tell me one thing, will you accept China what bad it's doing? From domestically, example, human rights and Internationally like example what it's mentioned in the first post.

[Lite]

Of course there is some wrong, China does many more rights then wrongs. No country is perfect (far from it actually)

The media does love to hype issues. So everything said should be taken with a pinch of salt. Thats not specific to this item, but others aswell.

[karachidude]

What human rights are u talking bout,ban on Piracy..u hav got to b kiddin me,like 3 years ago atleast 2000 muslims were murdered in Gujrat India...what does that say bout India...boycott

Just a few day India's Head of Miltary said,India is preparing for War against Pakistan and China at the same time meeting with Sonia Gandhi...and ur talking bout hackers

[DKT27]

@lite: Yea, I will have to agree with it. But I don't like the way it's going on.........@Kdude: Not China's development but issues concerned with the country.

[Lite]

Its highly unlikely, despite the tensions between the two nations, India and Pakistan would be stupid enough to go to war with each other. It can only lead to disaster. Remember a while back... Pakistan was preparing for a war against India. I can only assume both nations are calling each others bluff.

Lets not make this one personal though ;)

Let stick to the matter at hand: Hackers.

Lets also not give into the media hype!

[Night Owl]

Iranian Cyber Army strikes again... in China!

As reported by TheNextWeb in the wee small hours of the morning, the most popular search engine in China has just been hacked by the 'Iranian Cyber Army'. This is the same group that brought down Twitter and an advocacy site supporting the Iranian presidential protesters.

Comments on TheNextWeb suggest that the site (Baidu) wasn't down for long. It was also the same kind of attack on Twitter: DNS cache poisoning. The data servers themselves weren't exploited or backdoored -- instead, the DNS entries that point your computer to Baidu (or Twitter) were altered and pointed to the Iranian Cyber Army's splash screen.

As to why the Iranian Cyber Army attacked the Chinese search engine, who knows! They might not even be Iranian! It might merely be a group of hackers masquerading their actions behind the Twitter and 'green protesters' link. I doubt we'll ever know the answer, and having worked out how to easily poison DNS records, I doubt they'll stop any time soon.

Unless, of course, everyone started using Google's secure Public DNS...

Source

[DKT27]

Just a last word on the topic, whatever the guys say on media, India is never going on a war against Pakistan, infact I and whole public would like to see India and Pak behaving as brothers again. Did you guys saw the Aman Ki Asha, Destination Peace, the initiative from The Times of India and The Jang Group of Pakistan.

No personal feelings. :)

But yeah, many people wont know that I'm a learning white hat that really hates to see black hats exploiting and some ruining other countries cyber world.

[Lite]

War against Iran then? :rolleyes:

Bush wanted to do it.... :P

[HX1]

who the F*** made America the Boss,and the F*** are they to judge,china is the fastest growing economy in the World,and someone very very stupid would say,they do not know how to run a country

I guess you like Communism, slave mentality, mass genocide...oh yeah and to have you privacy invaded, your system data mined and hacked.. Not to mention the fact that anything you may have as an intellectual property will become sole property of the government.. Not to mention what actions like these bring upon yourself..

There are many more things to quote but I am lazing and just going to cover it for myself here.

Disputing a border is one thing.. crossing an ocean and going into a country while nobody is looking and stealing property of other people IS NOT, disputing it.. That's militant action. ( all the while supposedly cutting out Piracy, BTW its more like censoring out where to buy a gun.. because they know they are pushing for another bloodbath revolution )

Great economy tons of exports.. but will they poison and kill your children? That's my next question.. Oh and who made these items again and what are the living conditions..At what cost?

...

Closing down access to something is a simple idea.. 'You drink poison you get sick.. You don't drink the poison anymore..' ..that would include anyone slipping it into your drink, or trying to convince you to as well.. I would either call it.. ANTI-something or maybe PRO-something else..

But just like the psychosis thread stated.. there are growing problems .. and in some way or another the proper idealism with n end result of success in just the basics of living are going to have to be achieved and .. most of ALL PROTECTED.. not just a perception of it.. Even f you have to do it inside on your own everyday...which on that note makes absolutely no sense to me as to why people continually fail on this SIMPLE BASIC ideal..

[Lite]

Topic Closed.

I might re-open it later. This about hackers, not about one country bombing another.

-------

Topic re-opened. Lets not make this into a one country vs another topic ;)