April 13, 2020

India's NSA (NTRO) Against Chinese COVID-19 Sigint/Cyber Hacking

Further to "Australia Striking Back Against COVID Exploiting Cyber Adversaries"
of April 12, 2020.

I looked at India's NSA the NTRO's website https://ntro.gov.in/ntroWeb/loadPublicationsHome.do

and came upon its information security April 2020 newsletter
https://nciipc.gov.in/documents/NCIIPC_Newsletter_Apr20.pdf  which, on page 3 usefully advises:

"Dear Readers,

The world is witnessing an unprecedented situation caused by COVID-19 pandemic. While its Economic, Social and Health impacts are being extensively reported, its impact on Critical Information Infrastructure is equally challenging.

A notable increase in the number of domains created using the words ‘Corona’ or ‘Covid-19’ have been detected. A vast majority of these are malicious aimed at stealing credentials. Readers who have visited such domains are advised to ‘Reset’ their passwords immediately.

Another modus operandi being used by the Threat Actors is to send out legitimate looking Corona related advisories impersonating as officials from government/health organizations, through malicious e-mail attachments.

In view of the lockdown, several critical sector entities have relaxed their geo-fencing restrictions to allow their personnel to log-in and work from home. This has increased the attack surface available to Threat Actors."

Pete Comment

China's NSA (combining MSS and PLA Third Department elements) is headquartered in northwest Beijing. China's international sigint reach now can include most satellite and soon any undersea cable links. eg. Chinese submarines and surface vessels (increasingly using deeper diving Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicles (ROVs) can splice fibre-optic cables making landfall in India  (see below).

Cable Landing Stations in India (Map courtesy: Telegeography via Submarine Cable Networks)
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Bigger picture of submarine cable connections, eg. India and Australia 
(Map courtesy Australia's ABC)
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Also interception can be made between the landfall in India (or Australia, etc) and main telephone or internet exchanges or in a telephone or internet exchange (especially exchange worker inside jobs, for money, blackmail or false flag).

Pete

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Pete,

Some more about unmanned but against submarines US Navy should turn to unmanned systems to track and destroy submarines how many does Australia need?

/Kjell

Pete said...

Hi /Kjell

Thanks for Bryan Clark's "US Navy should turn to unmanned systems to track and destroy submarines" at https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/04/13/us-navy-should-turn-to-unmanned-systems-to-track-and-destroy-submarines/ . Its very much an intra-US, high budget, debate article.

I think the large Unmanned surface vehicle (USV) in the photo above the article is too specialised (its mainly for anti-SSK ASW) and expensive for the RAN. Such a USV would be too slow/insufficient range-at-speed to chase Chinese SSNs/SSGNs travelling at 28 knots from the Chinese submarine base at Hainan to the approaches to Australia's major capital cities.

Australia has relied on unmanned technologies, like ally shared SOSUS and satellites, for decades. Also sonobuoys dropped by P-3 and P-8 MPAs.

In terms of submarine launched UUVs I read somewhere Australia is limiting the size to torpedo tube (533mm) diameter. So that suggests our future UUVs might be increasingly smart torpedoes/mobile mines.

Also the RAN's surface ships are increasingly fielding rotary UAVs that could dip active sonar and maybe carry lightweight torpedoes.

Cheers

Pete