Two days after my post suggesting that the massive electricity outage in India might be sabotage of some kind, I find that the Indian Defense Review has taken up the theme.
I’m not sure whether to feel flattered or worried. In a post entitled “Is Electricity Outage a Cyber Attack on India by China?” Air Vice -Marshal A. K. Tiwari evades addressing the issue, but he does provide a lengthy description of the concept of cyberwarfare and the issues involved.
Why am I worried? Because I rather think someone is setting up China for a confrontation with India that can do neither country any good.
It’s not that the Chinese are incapable of stealth attacks. But I wonder about attacks that come with Chinese IP addresses attached to them.
That was the case with the Vizag attack on the Indian Navy’s HQ recently.
I’m more inclined to think that the Anglo-Zionist establishment might be stirring up things, especially in light of the Gupta case, the attack on the fishing boat near Dubai, the Time cover story of Manmohan Singh, the Anna Hazare Trojan-horse, and dozens of other incidents I’ve listed several times on this blog.
Malefactors use bloggers to unwittingly amplify suspicions, rumors, or possibilities and lend the very credence those rumors need to succeed in having an effect. I wouldn’t like to play the role of dupe in any kind of psywar.
On the other hand, I get a kick out of seeing my narrative echoed by at least one listener in a position of influence.
“When one’s computer system does not work, it is not easy to distinguish whether the failure is a genuine malfunction or a result of malicious attack. More often than not one tends to believe that his computer system itself is malfunctioning. So it is difficult to determine if one is under cyber attack. The nature of attacks are such, for example hidden Trojans activated on command or at pre-determined time, that one does not know when the actual attack was launched.
The origins of attack also remain uncertain. The attacking nation or non-state actor can route his attack via a computers located in a third country or even through benign computers based in the country being attacked. These could be the personal computers of citizens of the country under attack. Such an approach poses major dilemma for defender and for the right to computer privacy in democratic societies.
The malware can be inbuilt in to the computer system at manufacturing stage itself. It can be pre-designed in micro chips for various items like sensors, routers, switches etc. It can be injected later on into system as a sleeper cell. Its algorithm can be programmed in variety of ways to defeat most defenses.
The defender in cyber world has to cope with many problems. The existing defenses are against only known viruses/worms. Defense networks, therefore, require constant upgradation. Even secure nets can be injected with virus even though attacker is not physically connected into the net. But then excessive security on the net decrease the system speed.”