How eagerly India wants to gain an edge in cyber warfare technology is evident from what Indian Naval Chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta told StartPost:
“The Indian Armed Forces are increasingly investing in networked operations, both singly and a joint fashion. We cannot, therefore, afford to be vulnerable to cyber attacks. Information Technology is our country’s known strength and it would be in our interest to leverage this strength in developing a formidable ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ cyber warfare capability. Harnessing the gene pool available in academia, private industry and the younger generation of talented individuals is imperative.”
Cyber warfare is complex and is more penetrating and detrimental than conventional warfare. It is fought on cyberspace using different tactics like cyber espionage, web vandalism, data gathering, Distributed Denial-of-Service Attacks, equipment disruption, critical infrastructure attacks, Compromised Counterfeit Hardware, etc. The Internet security company McAfee in their 2007 annual report stated that approximately 120 countries have been developing ways to use the Internet as a weapon to target financial markets, government computer systems and utilities.
Lethality of cyber warfare becomes palpable by the fact that till April 2009, the Pentagon has spent more than $100 million in 6 months to fight cyber attacks on its different systems.
Unlike the usual conventional threats, cyber warfare is a new battlefield for the Pakistani government and people alike and there are reports emerging that Indian and Israeli agencies are taking these known cyber threats to the next level by using money, talent and technology to defame Pakistan and its nuclear programme.
Though the Indian military establishment and political leadership has used the Chinese threat as an excuse for introducing new war tactics and systems in the subcontinent, history between India and Pakistan dictates that India’s aspirations of its cyber warfare plans would be most detrimental to Pakistan.
In March 2009, the Indian Army conducted a war game called Divine Matrix. The game included a simulation in which China launches a nuclear attack on India somewhere in 2017. The exercise demonstrated how China will launch a cyber attack before an actual nuclear attack on India. Given the official nature of the simulation, Chinese authorities were naturally astonished, “We are surprised by the report. Leaders of China and India had already reached a consensus that the two countries will not pose a threat to each other but rather treat each other as partners,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang expressed his views on Indian cyber warfare exercise.
In reality both China and India have been in negotiations since 2004 to boost their economic trade and cooperation in various other fields including defense. In the backdrop of all this and renewed cooperation between the two countries, it is very unlikely that they would wage any sort of war whereas Pakistan is the only country against whom India may consider a nuclear war over issues including Indian waters, and Kashmir issue.
Limited cyber skirmishes have already taken place between India and Pakistan in 2008 when a group of Indian hackers defaced the website of Ministry of Oil and Gas, Government of Pakistan. Pakistani hackers in retaliation defaced many Indian websites. These counter cyber attacks are considered a major reason for India to adopt “joint fashion” against Pakistan with help of Israel.
According to reports, Israel recently established a cyber task force for cyber warfare against Islam and Pakistan. A budget of $ 1, 50, 000, 00 has been also allocated to this force to carry out various digital espionage and information gathering operations from strategic offices of Government of Pakistan.
Breaching network security is one tactic. In addition, Israel has also set up a huge workforce of writers on the internet whose primary task is to wage propaganda war against Pakistan and its nuclear weapons and armed forces. Hebrew websites and magazines have been targeting Pakistan by orchestrating near to impossible scenarios about Pakistan’s nukes with a view to deceiving the world that these are going to fall in the hands of Al-Qaeda. Israelnationalnews.com, IsraelNN.com, and Arutz-7’s Hebrew newsmagazine are a few websites which follow this agenda.
The Israeli government first tested these cyber propaganda tools during operation Cast Lead (brutal military operation in Gaza in 2008) when bloggers, surfers and writers were asked by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel, through www.giyus.org (Give Israel You United Support), to promote words like “holocaust”, “promised land” and “murder of jews” on social networking and blogging websites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Blogspot, wordpress, etc. Israeli government went to the extent of providing written messages which were to be posted on aforementioned websites as if they were personal responses or views of citizens of various countries.
Israeli lobbies in US and UK waged a similar agenda against Pakistan’s nuclear programme in the past through satellite news channels (like BBC, FOX) and newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post). New tactics of using social networking and blogging websites on internet have certainly more probability in shaping people’s opinion about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons as unsafe. This campaign was also launched from US and Western media when operation Rah-e-Rast was initiated in Swat and Malakand region. The target in that particular campaign was to defame the Pakistani Government and security institutions as inept and incapable in saving the nation from terrorists.
The Israeli cyber operation was resolutely countered by young Palestinian bloggers by posting millions of pictures and footages from Gaza over the internet. These photos and footage revealed atrocities committed by Israeli forces in Gaza during operation Cast Lead. However, these Israeli and Indian cyber ‘evangelists’ were successful in scaring ordinary masses in and outside Pakistan by exaggerating the Taliban threat of take over of Islamabad. The real intention behind all this Taliban hoopla was to manipulate the world into believing that Pakistani nuclear weapons are about to fall into Taliban hands.
Like their Israeli counterparts, the Indian government also took active part in this campaign. The Indian premier went on air saying that some Pakistani nuclear installations are already in Taliban control. This further strengthened the scare created by “paid” surfers on the internet. India’s current focus is to deceive and confuse locals of Pakistan’s Northern Areas where Pakistan is about to build three mega dams to fulfill its needs, the hidden agenda being to weaken Pakistan’s security establishment. Indian think tanks, websites and discussion forums are constantly pointing out that Pakistan is going to build dams in disputed territory in DiaMir, Bonji, etc. whereas the fact is that India is building dams illegally on Pakistani rivers and Pakistani plans are all about Pakistan’s own rivers.
Apart from all this, enemies of Pakistan are adopting more complex tactics like information gathering and equipment disruption. The US pressurised Pakistan to put dubious Permissive Action Link boxes on its nuclear program to prevent “unauthorised” detonation of bombs but Pakistan quite sensibly refused these locks which are said to be impossible to beat. This is one example of the extent to which Pakistan’s enemies are pushing against its nuclear program through cyber warfare. Given the influential nature of cyberspace, Pakistan must build a dedicated professional force to fight against all cyber warfare tactics. A special wing inside armed forces must also be raised to counter advanced cyber threat from Israel, India and US.
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