Top Secret Indian Government documents sneaked into by Chinese hackers

[Kinetic]

China is good in software but India is much better than China. China may be better in some areas but over all India is way ahead. Software capabilities does not lie in embedded systems but in mainframe, core software customization, design and development of new technologies. If only patent represents one capabilities in a field than Samsung is the second best company in the world way ahead of Microsoft, HP, Oracle!!! But thats not true.

 

[bigmoneymaker]

SO I SEE, indians are always being fed with this kinda rubbish, so the so called mainstream media news in india are just unbeatable junk makers in the name of news freedom.

 

[CONNAN]

time to close this thread

 

[hembo]

China hackers 'stole' N-E, Naxal data
Wed, Apr 7 09:26 AM

A year after Indian embassies across the world were compromised by a China-based cyber espionage network, investigators have uncovered the extent of the spy ring, revealing that computers in the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) were infected, giving the hackers access to confidential documents on the security assessment of Northeastern states and Naxalite movement, besides information on missile defence systems and military equipment.

More than 35 sensitive computers belonging to the NSCS, Indian Air Force, the Army's Military Intelligence and Indian missions in Kabul and Moscow were accessed by the spy ring for long periods of time after they got infected by 'GhostNet', a Chinese cyber network that first came to light last year when investigators were looking into loopholes in the Dalai Lama's computer systems in Dharamsala.

While during the limited period of the investigation no secret documents were accessed, the extent of damage is still not known, considering that the Chinese spy network could have been operational for several years.

The latest revelations come from a second report on GhostNet by researchers based at the Munk Center for International Studies in the University of Toronto, , titled 'Shadows in the Cloud: Investigation Cyber Espionage 2.0'. The Indian Defence Ministry has not yet reacted to the report, with officials saying they are still studying its implications. However, it has come to light that the report was shared with the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) - India's premier electronic surveillance agency - in February by the investigating team.

While sensitive matter on the defence forces was not leaked - information compromised on the Pechora and Iron Dome missile defence systems and the Shakti artillery control and command system is already in the public domain - the main cause of worry for India is that the hackers got access to computers in the NSCS, the apex body through which all intelligence reports and strategic analysis are processed.

The report says that at least 14 documents, including two marked secret, were stolen from NSCS computers. "The exfiltrated documents focus on India's security situation in the states of Assam, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura as well as the Naxalites, Maoists, and what is referred to as 'left wing extremism'," the report says.

Computers linked with the 21 Mountain Artillery Brigade in the state of Assam; the Air Force Station, Race Course, New Delhi; and the Air Force Station, Vadodara, Gujarat; were also compromised.

Besides, computers at Indian missions in Kabul, Moscow, Dubai and Nigeria were accessed by the GhostNet, resulting in leakage of documents on diplomatic relations with other countries, confidential visa documents and financial and travel information of senior embassy staff. Computers of nine key Indian embassies across the world, including offices in the US, UK and Germany, besides India's premier National Informatics Centre (NIC), which governs and hosts all government websites, were infected.

The team has linked the attack to individuals based in Chengdu, Sichuan. All attacks on Indian computers originated from the town. While there is no conclusive proof to link the hacking to the official government machinery in China, investigators are certain that the origin of the network lies within the country.

"It is certainly possible that the attackers were directed in some manner - either by sub-contract or privateering - by agents of the Chinese state, but we have no evidence to prove that assertion," the report says.

In a reaction from Beijing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the allegations were baseless and that China was opposed to hacking and considered it an international crime.

"During our investigation, we recovered documents that are extremely sensitive from a national security perspective as well as documents that contain sensitive information that could be exploited by an adversary for intelligence purposes. We recovered one document that appears to be an encrypted diplomatic correspondence, two documents classified as 'secret', six as 'restricted', and five as 'confidential'," the report says.

The documents also contained confidential information regarding India's international relations and assessment of activities in West Africa, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Middle East. While computers of the Military Engineer Services (MES) were also infected, non-sensitive information like manuals and forms, besides personal details of individuals, was leaked.

In March last year, the mysterious GhostNet had first come to light when the Canadian team, which includes an Indian researcher Shishir Nagaraja, hit on the espionage ring while investigating cyber security loopholes in the Dalai Lama's office in Dharamsala. The investigation had pointed to several hackers in China's Hainan province, where the Lingshui Signals Intelligence facility is located.

 

[hembo]

Mr connanxlrc1000,

It is better to be little paranoid then sorry later when the matter is about national security.

People have no problem being paranoid when someone blames pakistanis for even a domestic gas cylinder bursting, but they shout at top of their voice when some credible investigative news is copied. Why such double standard?

 

[CONNAN]

THE CLIMAX FOR THIS THREAD


Army braces for cyber attacks-Politics/Nation-News-The Economic Times

NEW DELHI: After the real world, the armed forces are on a red alert in the virtual world as well. Even as they tackle Chinese troop intrusions

on the ground, they are grappling with a sharp increase in online espionage attacks from across the Line of Actual Control as well.

Top sources say the Army-CERT (computer emergency response team) recently issued the high alert to all military formations and installations to guard against "focussed large-scale cyber attacks'' that are being planned on "internet facing'' government organisations, prominent brands and corporate groups.

Quoting "reliable'' information, the alert ominously warns the cyber-attacks are likely to be launched from this month onwards. The date mentioned, in fact, is March 31. Effective measures must be taken to protect networks from data-thefts, "distributed denial-of-service attacks'', paralysing computer viruses and the like, it says.

Sources said several military establishments, including the Defence Services Staff College at Wellington, had even refrained from using computers directly connected to internet modems for three-four days over the last week as a precaution. Though the alert holds the cyber-attacks can originate from any country across the world, the suspicion is firmly on Chinese hackers.

This comes even as a group of Canadian and American cyber-security researchers in the new report, `Shadows in the Cloud', held that China-based online espionage gangs have accessed classified documents from several Indian defence and security establishments.

The defence ministry preferred to remain quiet, only saying that it was "studying the report'' which had "lot of grey areas''. Blasting this "clueless state of affairs'', experts said Indian agencies really needed to bolster cyber-security measures as well as sharpen their own cyber-warfare or information warfare skills.

China, in particular, has made cyber-warfare one of its topmost military priorities, with Chinese hackers regularly breaking into sensitive computer networks of countries like US, UK, Germany and India. In December last year, for instance, Chinese online espionage agents had even tried to penetrate computers in the Indian national security adviser's office.

The new report, for instance, says the researchers came across one Indian encrypted diplomatic correspondence, two documents marked `secret', six as `restricted' and five as `confidential' which were accessed by the Chinese hackers.

Moreover, the "affected'' institutions ranged from National Security Council Secretariat and several Indian embassies to the 21 Mountain Brigade in Assam and the Air Force Station at Race Course in New Delhi, which is bang opposite the PM's official residence.

Apart from files related to India's surface-to-air missiles systems and Shakti artillery command and control systems, the people `compromised' included even an officer of the directorate-general of military intelligence.

"Cyber-warfare can be even more destructive than missile strikes, crippling as they can economic, communication and strategic networks and infostructure,'' said a senior officer.
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[pop_alsa]

China is good in software but India is much better than China. China may be better in some areas but over all India is way ahead. Software capabilities does not lie in embedded systems but in mainframe, core software customization, design and development of new technologies. If only patent represents one capabilities in a field than Samsung is the second best company in the world way ahead of Microsoft, HP, Oracle!!! But thats not true.

Nope. That's what some fools in Indian IT industry loves to tell to Indians.

Ask Infosys ex-Chairman Narayanan why China is much ahead of India in Software too. He will tell you.

By the way, Indian IT companies don't hold any patents on mainframe technologies, but Chinese have made their own and they are far ahead in this area.

Now, I don't blame you if you don't know that. Indian media censors Chinese achievements more than Chinese media censorship of Western media. That's an irony but its true.

India love to ape Western media and live in delusions. Its well known fact that Western media had always kept China in negative image.

So, tell me why Boeing transferred their factory to China? That's because China has a better base in aviation R&D than India and better work culture. Indians won't admit this because it hurts their silly egos.

Frankly speaking, call center workers in India have more egos than humble factory floor workers in China. Indians talk more, do less.

 

[blueoval79]

Wow.....I never knew that News and opinion pieces published in Media are called top secret documents......all they could hack were two websites related to Defense Magazines......and wow...what a hullabaloo...

 

[liteon]

answering phone calls and customizing database apps is not = IT power..don't fool yourself, indians.

 

[pop_alsa]

India doesn't need to worry about hacking attempts.

Just ask the daddy(USA)'s company to take over management of Indian armed forces communication network.

 

[pop_alsa]

Wow.....I never knew that News and opinion pieces published in Media are called top secret documents......all they could hack were two websites related to Defense Magazines......and wow...what a hullabaloo...

Report is from Western agency, on hacking in Defense ministry of an Asian country(India). And, it created scare in that Asian country(India) and hate towards another asian country(China).

How that Western agency got access to Defense ministry(Indian) system? And how they know it was hacked? How come they know before even Indian ministry came to know about it? LOL.

Indians(most of them) are fools basically. They talk more, think less.

Indians should first ask themselves, who is running their country, Indians or Americans?

 

[democracyspeaks]

Report is from Western agency, on hacking in Defense ministry of an Asian country(India). And, it created scare in that Asian country(India) and hate towards another asian country(China).

How that Western agency got access to Defense ministry(Indian) system? And how they know it was hacked? How come they know before even Indian ministry came to know about it? LOL.

Indians(most of them) are fools basically. They talk more, think less.

Stop acting like "You think u know everything", if someone is a fool then thats you and ur foolish posts.

we have (including me & my team)been tracking chinese hack attempts since 3 years and also counter hacking and you guys will never know about it.

Its a constant cat and mouse chase.

The only difference is chinese government is backing the hackers to attack and we r being backed to defend primarily.


Indians are way ahead in IT without doubt, just because of chinese cyber espionage on various countries dosent mean they r better and in case this is the criteria then Russian and eastern european hackers are 100 miles ahead of the chinese hackers.

Regarding mainframes IBM holds the maximum patents so stop writing crap regarding chinese mainframes and blah blah

Open source mainframes are not used much due to numerous reasons which I will not go into but IBM patents are one huge problem for using opensoure mainframes.

Lastly American servers and mils are more hacked by the chinese then the indian ones I guess these americans need to outsource there security needs to us, since the best of the best American hackers I know of are busy making money or opening new firms.

 

[liteon]

Stop acting like "You think u

Indians are way ahead in IT without doubt, just because of chinese cyber espionage on various countries dosent mean they r better and in case this is the criteria..

haha..no you're not ahead and i'm sorry to burst your bubbles..

SOFTWARE INDUSTRY PERFORMANCE IN INDIA AND CHINA
Stanley Nollen
Georgetown University
McDonough School of Business
Washington DC USA

full report here: *ttp://www.ris.org.in/India_Globalisation_Software%20in%20India%20and%20China_Stanley%20Nollen.pdf


The Indian software industry is the world’s leading exporter of software services and among the
world’s fastest growing software industries. The Chinese software industry is equally as large as
the Indian industry – maybe larger – and equally fast growing, but it is mainly oriented to the
domestic market.

The Indian software industry is predominantly a software services industry while the Chinese
software industry is more evenly balanced between products and services...Most of the
Indian software services consisted of production of customized software from project-based
engagements with clients. Much of this work consists of programming, testing, and maintenance,
and in total probably more than three-quarters of Indian software services production is at the low
end of the knowledge capital continuum.

In China, services accounted for less than half of Chinese software industry revenue according to
some sources (NASSCOM..and China Center for Information Development..)
...Chinese software products consist mostly of systems software, middleware, and applications software.


English is spoken by all educated Indians but not by all educated Chinese, and that is an often
cited reason why India is a major software exporter and China is not. The largest market for
software exports by far is the English-language speaking United States.


Technology has not been critical to the development of the Indian software industry. Indian
software firms lag behind their Chinese counterparts in technology inputs and outputs, but that
lag hasn’t hampered the Indian industry’s growth. Fewer Indian than Chinese software firms
have R&D expenditures, and those that do spend less. This result is due only in part to the
greater concentration of software services rather than products firms in the Indian industry –
software products firms are more likely to have R&D expenditures than software services firms.
In addition, Indian software firms introduce fewer new products than Chinese software firms.
Until very recently, the software business wasn’t an especially high technology business.
Advanced technology was not the basis on which firms competed, especially for software
services. The export business was mostly customized software services, much of which was
low-end entry level work for which neither R&D nor new product introductions were important.

Indian software firms lag behind their Chinese counterparts in both technology inputs and
outputs, but this weakness was not critical for most of the work done by Indian customized
software services firms.



China's software industry revenues, January to December 2009

Revenue (RMB bln) Y-o-y change (%)
Software products 328.8 ($48.13billion) 26.3
Software services 212.63 ($31.12billion) 31.4
Of which: software outsourcing 30.7($4.49billion) 35
System integration software 220.29 ($32.24billion) 23.7
Embedded software 167.36 ($24.50billion) 22.1
IC design software 22.22 ($3.25billion) 10.1
Software exports $18.5 billion 14
Of which: software outsourcing $2.4billion 15
Industry total 951.3($139.24billion) 25.6

Source: MIIT
*ttp://tmt.interfaxchina.com/news/2609

 

[pop_alsa]

The only difference is chinese government is backing the hackers to attack and we r being backed to defend primarily.

Everyone does that. Americans, Germans also do that.

So, why your Indian Government is acting sissy? You don't have skills to hack into China? Who is stopping you then?

That's how world works. Typical naive Indian.

Indians are way ahead in IT without doubt, just because of chinese cyber espionage on various countries dosent mean they r better and in case this is the criteria then Russian and eastern european hackers are 100 miles ahead of the chinese hackers.

I agree. That will be narrow minded to judge China based on Western research reports. Indians have own brains too. But they don't use them, but just ape the western reports.

Regarding mainframes IBM holds the maximum patents so stop writing crap regarding chinese mainframes and blah blah

IBM is not Indian company.

Wait a minute, are you "USA is my daddy" type Indian?

Lastly American servers and mils are more hacked by the chinese then the indian ones I guess these americans need to outsource there security needs to us, since the best of the best American hackers I know of are busy making money or opening new firms.

First learn to secure your own Indian servers. Then lecture your American daddy on security.

And, maybe you should outsource Indian cyber security to Western agencies, who know better about Indian Defense systems, than Indians themselves?

Well, I agree on that last part. American hackers will open new firms and hire 100 of your types to serve American needs. I am sure, you are ready to serve.

 

[pop_alsa]

SOFTWARE INDUSTRY PERFORMANCE IN INDIA AND CHINA
Stanley Nollen
Georgetown University
McDonough School of Business
Washington DC USA

full report here: *ttp://www.ris.org.in/India_Globalisation_Software%20in%20India%20and%20China_Stanley%20Nollen.pdf


The Indian software industry is the world’s leading exporter of software services and among the
world’s fastest growing software industries. The Chinese software industry is equally as large as
the Indian industry – maybe larger – and equally fast growing, but it is mainly oriented to the
domestic market.

The Indian software industry is predominantly a software services industry while the Chinese
software industry is more evenly balanced between products and services...Most of the
Indian software services consisted of production of customized software from project-based
engagements with clients. Much of this work consists of programming, testing, and maintenance,
and in total probably more than three-quarters of Indian software services production is at the low
end of the knowledge capital continuum.

In China, services accounted for less than half of Chinese software industry revenue according to
some sources (NASSCOM..and China Center for Information Development..)
...Chinese software products consist mostly of systems software, middleware, and applications software.


English is spoken by all educated Indians but not by all educated Chinese, and that is an often
cited reason why India is a major software exporter and China is not. The largest market for
software exports by far is the English-language speaking United States.


Technology has not been critical to the development of the Indian software industry. Indian
software firms lag behind their Chinese counterparts in technology inputs and outputs, but that
lag hasn’t hampered the Indian industry’s growth. Fewer Indian than Chinese software firms
have R&D expenditures, and those that do spend less. This result is due only in part to the
greater concentration of software services rather than products firms in the Indian industry –
software products firms are more likely to have R&D expenditures than software services firms.
In addition, Indian software firms introduce fewer new products than Chinese software firms.
Until very recently, the software business wasn’t an especially high technology business.
Advanced technology was not the basis on which firms competed, especially for software
services. The export business was mostly customized software services, much of which was
low-end entry level work for which neither R&D nor new product introductions were important.

Indian software firms lag behind their Chinese counterparts in both technology inputs and
outputs, but this weakness was not critical for most of the work done by Indian customized
software services firms.



China's software industry revenues, January to December 2009

Revenue (RMB bln) Y-o-y change (%)
Software products 328.8 ($48.13billion) 26.3
Software services 212.63 ($31.12billion) 31.4
Of which: software outsourcing 30.7($4.49billion) 35
System integration software 220.29 ($32.24billion) 23.7
Embedded software 167.36 ($24.50billion) 22.1
IC design software 22.22 ($3.25billion) 10.1
Software exports $18.5 billion 14
Of which: software outsourcing $2.4billion 15
Industry total 951.3($139.24billion) 25.6

Source: MIIT
*ttp://tmt.interfaxchina.com/news/2609

Indian media will never show this to Indians. That will blast their silly egos.

Only ex-Infosys Chairman has spoken about above reality but his words also were censored after some time because it hurted "IT superpower" image of India.

Many Indians in software services industry knows the reality but they don't talk about it because its embarrassing.