China crisis? Now India claims hackers are attacking it from behind the bamboo curtain

Things are heating-up.  Accusations that Beijing-backed hackers are probing the official networks of foreign governments with intrusions and spyware seem to be popping up with more regularity.

The latest report comes from The Times of India, which claims that senior government officials in New Delhi have privately confirmed that Chinese attacks in the last few months have targeted the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the National Informatics Centre (NIC).  The NIC provides the network backbone for central and state government, as well as other administrative bodies in India.

The unnamed officials are quoted as saying that this is China’s way of gaining “an asymmetrical advantage” over a potential adversary.  Speculation has risen that the intrusions could help a country map its enemy’s…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.