A department which comes under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has sent a report to the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) and other security agencies, has said that the most number of cyber attacks on Indian official websites are mainly from China and then from US and Russia. The report also flagged the possibility of “malicious actors from Pakistan using German and Canadian cyberspace for intruding into Indian cyberspace and carrying out malicious activities”.

According to the report published which was prepared by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), an agency under the ministry analyzed all kinds of cyber attacks made on Indian official websites from April-June 2018. Cert-In is the nodal agency under the government which overseas and deals with such cybersecurity threats especially at a national level for attempts like hacking and phishing. The agency collects, analyses and disseminates information on “cyber incidents”, and along with that issues alerts for serious “cyber security incidents”.

As per the report, the agency observed that such malicious attempts were specially made by Chinese which still continues to “intrude” Indian cyberspace in a very “significant” way. “The cyber attacks from China made up 35% of the total number of cyber attacks on official Indian websites, followed by US (17%), Russia (15%), Pakistan (9%), Canada (7%) and Germany (5%),” it says.

“Many of the institutions impacted by the malicious activities have been identified, and they have been advised to take appropriate preventive action. These include Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), National Informatics Centre (NIC), Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), Railways, Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) and some banks like Punjab National Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce, State Bank of India and state data centres, particularly in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka,” it says.

“The activities relating to intruding into the cyberspace are being regularly monitored. China continues to be intruding the cyberspace in a significant way followed by the US and Russia. It has also been observed that intruding activities are coming from Canadian and German cyberspace — most possibly suspected to have originated from Pakistan actors to target Indian websites,” it states.

“They are targeting by sending spear phishing emails with malware attachments. Phishing attacks are usually in the form of an email from a trusted source where they ask for personal details such as bank details personal details, passwords,” explained an official.

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