Chinese will attack Indian private companies and media houses

Last updated on February 14th, 2023 at 11:22 am

Chinese hackers that have earlier attacked Australian entities and now going all out to hit India through cyber attacks. Confirmed reports are indicating the Chinese cyber attackers are targeting Indian government agencies, media houses, pharmaceutical companies, telecom operators and a large tyre company.  This has been confirmed by the cyber intelligence firm Cyfirma that has said to have gathered information through conversations with what is known as the Dark Web (part of the Internet that is not indexed by Search engines) forums.

According to the Cyfirma, around 9 to 10 days ago Chinese hacker forums were discussing ways to teach India a lesson. They were targeting Indian media houses that have said to be critical of the Chinese army. The ‘open’ conspiracy has taken place in Mandarin and Cantonese.

According to Kumar Ritesh, chairman and CEO of Cyfirma, there are particularly two cyber attack companies; Gothic Panda and Stone Panda. They are well known hacking groups with strangely, direct affiliation to PLA (People’s Liberation Army). It also a well known fact that China has been notorious for controlling information flow. It has, in the past, tried to control the social media giant Tik-Tok and threatened to close it down, if it did not share data from it. Apparently Tik-Tok has been banned in the US.

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Cyfirma has disclosed names of companies like MRF Tyres, Airtel, BSNL, Sun Pharmaceutical, Cipla, Reliance Jio, Hindustan Times, Times of India and Republic TV, among others, featured on the list. The cyber intelligence firm has communicated these names to CERT-In (Computer Emergency Response Team).   Additionally there are countries like North Korea is believed to have built a cyber army of 7,000 hackers to steal state secrets or weapon blueprints, disrupt critical infrastructure and steal from banks and cryptocurrency exchanges of rival countries.