Indian government plans counter cyber offensive

The government of India is preparing a roadmap for counter offensive in the cyber space against the sources of the attacks; it has been facing on its administrative and military installations, from some countries.

The government is planning to train and prepare a network of ethical hackers to collect classified information from systems of other countries. Information Technology professionals and ethical hackers will be given legal immunity for these activities.

The National Security Council is reportedly considering a proposal to enhance capabilities of the cyber agencies to exploit weaknesses in the information systems of other countries and gather information of military activities.

The proposal also calls for the establishment of laboratories to enact a cyber attack by mock attackers. The laboratories are to be used to train officials in defensive and offensive cyber warfare techniques.

"The Indian intelligence and military agencies regularly use Indian hackers to carry out counter offensives. However, the quantum of such work being carried out here is a lot less than it is in countries such as China and Pakistan," said India's youngest and first certified ethical hacker Ankit Fadia.

The Indian authorities aim plan offensive against spies and block attackers by breaching their security systems. Cyber experts have repeatedly called for deployment of ethical cyber hackers to safeguard India information systems and they also demand that the adequate infrastructure for fighting cyber rime be created.

The National Technical Research Organisation, the Defence Intelligence Agency and the Defence Research and Development Organisation will jointly implement the blueprint.

There are also plans to put in place early-warning mechanisms for attacks on the information systems in the country and also to develop expertise in cyber forensics which will allow agencies to find the source of the attack.

The Indian defense installations faced a serious attack in April 2010 form a cyber group based in China that aimed to steal sensitive information. A group of Canadian and American researchers have found a spy operation called 'Shadow Network' based in China that has accessed top secret files of the Indian government.

In the growing reliance on information systems the country wants to ensure that its systems are foolproof. The government is taking a number of steps to improve security of the system. A number of governments around the world are developing strategy and infrastructure to counter the growing menace of cyber attacks.