The new Era of warfare and where India stands
The age of cyber-warfare and the country of the large digitally illiterate population.
From the dawn of civilization, there is always been an instinct in humans to fight to be superior to others. We have fought for food, we have fought for shelter, we have fought for freedom, we have even fought for love, and this flair of fighting made us the ruler of planet Earth. But as the cognition in us evolved we humans also evolved so our weapon of destruction has also evolved. We started with a stone weapon then Bow arrow and then spears gave way to swords from there we made guns and bombs and now the most powerful weapon a country could have is Nuclear bombs. Horses gave way to tanks and then fighter jets and now drones but are these enough or are we leading towards a new era of weaponization?
Well yes the faster you develop new technology will put you on the winning or losing side.
The next phase that we are leaning toward is Cyberwarfare. Nation-states have a new weapon in their armoury. And the internet provides an entirely new way to fight and it is universal.
But what is cyberwarfare?
Cyberwarfare refers to the use of digital attacks — like computer malware, ransomware, and hacking by one country to disrupt the vital computer systems of another, with the aim of creating damage, death, and destruction. Future wars will see hackers using computer code to attack an enemy’s infrastructure, fighting alongside troops using conventional weapons like guns and missiles.
A shadowy world that is still filled with spies, hackers, and top-secret digital weapons projects, cyberwarfare is an increasingly common and dangerous feature of international conflicts. But right now the combination of an ongoing cyberwarfare arms race and a lack of clear rules governing online conflict means there is a real risk that incidents could rapidly escalate out of control.
As beautifully said by former British foreign and defence secretary Malcolm Rifkind “wars of the future will not just involve the armed forces of the combatants fighting each other. They will include economic warfare, propaganda, armed militias, terrorists, and, most especially, cyber warfare.”
Why should India worry?
Let’s talk about some examples
In 2015 the group “spearworm” widely thought to be acting under instructions from the Kremlin, hacked the Ukrainian power system with malware named Black energy and disrupted the country’s electricity supply. They successfully infiltrated three different energy systems to do their damage. It was the world’s first successful cyberattack on a power grid.
This is not the first time that attacks on such a massive scale happened “The Russians [carried out] a massive cyberattack on Estonia some years ago,” said Rifkind, referring to the 2007 attack on the Estonian parliament, banking system, and other critical infrastructure. And it would not be the last. The 2016 Russian interference in the US presidential election, and possibly in the Brexit referendum, indicated what is at stake. A full-scale cyberwar would be orders of magnitude more serious than this.
And how can we forget the famous “STUXNET malware” attack on the Iranian nuclear plant as per the conspiracy theories it is said that the attack was carried out by joint operation of the USA, Israel, and the UK.
But if we talk about India how can we forget that “The network of one of India’s nuclear power plants was infected with malware created by North Korea’s state-sponsored hackers.”
And it is just a single example according to business-standard “India among top nations attacked by latest ransomware in 2019”
And the latest news that we are hearing is the online learning platform Unacademy “A database of around 22 million users of Unacademy with contacts of employees of Wipro, Infosys, Cognizant, Google and its investor Facebook is up for sale on the dark web, according to US-based security firm Cybele.”
And again the famous Maze ransomware attack on It services giant Cognizant the official statement is “Cognizant can confirm that a security incident involving our internal systems, and causing service disruptions for some of our clients, is the result of a Maze ransomware attack” This attack has cost 550 million $ to the company.
The main issue with India:-
India with approx. 442 million smartphone users and approx. 650 million internet users is an easy and large attack surface in cyberwarfare.
We have a large group of unaware and digitally illiterate people and it is a major concern. People don’t know the use of safe internet. They have a lack of cyber attack awareness and many more.
We Indians are not concerned about our data, we are not even concerned about the links that we click on and that’s why we are very easy victims of social engineering attacks which can lead to many bigger attacks.
What do we need to do?
The first step should be decreasing our attack surface which means we have to create a nationwide awareness campaign for making people aware of the secure use of the internet.
Second, we have to create a compulsory syllabus for cybersecurity education from school.
Third, we have to work on major research on creating an impenetrable cybersecurity infrastructure. We have to create lethal digital weapons in case of war we should be ready.
The fourth point is that we need a huge amount of hackers and incident response teams in case of cyber warfare. Gov. should work on this as much as they work on different armies.
For a country that is in its developing phase to such a great extent, we need to work on this particular field. As we are surrounded by only enemies in some cases that are not highlighted because of national security reasons I can say we need to work on it as fast as we can.
The point of this article is not to defame our cybersecurity infrastructure but it is just a way to aware people that we are in the end game now.
And FYI we have the smartest hackers in the country and we have enough brilliant minds, we have a great community that if in case something like this happens we will be ready on the frontline.
But Gov. needs to work closely with the community to make India’s cyberspace secure like the government of other countries are working.
As said by a famous writer:-
“They told you that you were safe. They told you lies. You are weak and defeated. For the price of one helicopter, we have brought you to your knees.― Thomas Waite, Lethal Code”
It’s time we need to stand up against a new threat together and work towards making our cyberspace secure.
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