China Hackers are planning to attack on Indian govt & industry

India and China engaged in violent clashes earlier this week, where we had lost Twenty Indian soldiers in the face-off, while many were injured.

The report says that the Chinese hackers groups are planning to attack Indian Government, establishments suspected to have launched a series of cyberattacks against Australian entities recently. The report says, they are targeting 20 lakh Indians on June 21, through the fishing campaign by the theme COVID-19 .

As per the report from the cyber Intelligence firm Cyfirma has gathered from conversations on Dark Web forums. Several government agencies, media houses, pharmaceutical companies, telecom operators and a large tyre company in India may be the target of cyberattack by hacking groups with links to China.

When we see the trading opportunity among India and China, China is Asia’s largest economy with the GDP of about $13.6 trillion, whereas India is at $2.7 trillion. China is India’s biggest trading partner after the U.S.

India runs a huge trade deficit with China, the biggest exporter to India.

Chinese exports to India comprises of smartphones, electrical appliances, power plant inputs, fertilisers, auto components, finished steel products, capital goods like power plants, telecom equipment, metro rail coaches, iron and steel products, pharmaceutical ingredients, chemicals and plastics and engineering goods, among other things,

There are roughly 800 Chinese companies in the domestic market. They have roughly 75 manufacturing facilities for smartphones, consumer appliances, construction equipment, power gear, automobiles, optical fibre, and chemicals. Cyfirma said they plan to send free COVID-19 testing emails to residents of Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Ahmedabad.

According to the Cyfirma, around 9 to 10 days ago Chinese hacker forums in Mandarin and Cantonese started talking about teaching a lesson to India, especially media houses which have been critical of Chinese army. What piqued our interest was the list published on these forums. Hackers are belongs to ‘Lazarus Group’ claim to 20 lakh individuals email ids. They had names of several Indian companies, media houses, telecom operators and a large tyre company.

When we started attributing the handles publishing these lists back to their sources we found that they belonged to two hacking groups, Gothic Panda and Stone Panda, two well-known hacking groups with direct affiliation to PLA (People’s Liberation Army)," said Kumar Ritesh, chairman and CEO, Cyfirma.