Chinese state-backed hackers made over 40,000 attempts to target India in last 5 days: Maha cyber security cell

Hackers from China are increasingly targeting various sectors in India, with over 40,300 cyber-attack attempts made in the last five days, Maharashtra’s cybersecurity cell stated. The cell noted an increase in activity of Chinese state-backed hackers targeting the country. The surge in attempts comes weeks after Indian and Chinese troops were engaged in a violent clash at the Galwan Valley.

"In the past five days, we have witnessed a sudden surge of cybercriminal activity in the Indian cyberspace. Various sectors, including infrastructure, information and banking, have been mainly targeted by Chinese attackers. At least 40,300 cyber-attacks have been made in this time period, Yashasvi Yadav, Special Inspector General of Police of Maharashtra Police's cyber wing, said, adding that and a large number of these attacks originated from Chengdu, the capital of China’s Sichuan province.

Yadav said these attacks can be divided into three categories: denial of service, IP hijacking and phishing.

Himanshu Dubey, Director of Quick Heal Security Labs, told News18, “Over the past few days, we have seen some well-calibrated attacks using malware that are designed to communicate with command and control servers based in China. Some of the actions include keylogging (a common tactic used to steal credentials), screen capture, privilege escalation (used to gain deep-level access to classified files) and data exfiltration."

Dubey noted that Pakistani hacker collective APT36 (aka Transparent Tribe) has also been targeting Indian Defence organisations persistently since March.