New Delhi: As India equipped for the much-anticipated G20 Summit right here within the capital over the weekend, researchers from homegrown cyber-security firm CloudSEK on Friday uncovered a plan by a number of hacktivist teams from Pakistan and Indonesia to launch cyber assaults on India.
CloudSEK’s contextual AI digital danger platform, XVigil, noticed that the federal government’s digital infrastructure is the first goal of hacktivists.
“This orchestrated campaign, known as #OpIndia, is motivated by a complex web of political factors, with many attacks seen as retaliatory strikes in the ongoing hacktivist warfare between nations. The primary attack methods anticipated in this campaign are Mass Defacement and DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks,” the researchers famous.
The ominous name for motion was sounded on September 7, when Team Herox, a hacktivist group, issued a message on encrypted messaging platform Telegram.
“They sought support from fellow hacktivist organisations to join forces for a series of attacks scheduled for September 9-10, aligning perfectly with the G20 summit’s timeline,” the researchers knowledgeable.
The hacktivist teams have been plotting cyberattacks on each private and non-private Indian organisations up to now, with ways starting from DDoS assaults to compromised account takeovers and information breaches.
“These hacktivists consistently exploit significant political events like the G20 Summit to gain visibility, making the government’s digital infrastructure a prime objective. The coordinated efforts by hacktivist groups from Pakistan and Indonesia to target India’s G20 Summit with planned cyberattacks are a stark reminder of the digital threats nations face,” stated Darshit Ashara, Head of Security Research and Threat Intelligence at CloudSEK.
The researchers highlighted an identical perception right into a latest hacktivist marketing campaign that focused over 1,000 Indian web sites as a part of their Independence Day marketing campaign in August.
The marketing campaign, orchestrated by hacktivist teams from numerous international locations, utilised ways equivalent to DDoS assaults, defacement assaults, and person account takeovers, echoing the patterns beforehand highlighted in CloudSEK’s hacktivists warfare report.
The report additionally reveals a major spike in hacktivist assaults through the first quarter of 2023 with India rising as the first focus of assaults.
“Our mission is to stay ahead of these evolving risks and empower organisations and individuals to fortify their digital defenses,” Ashara added. CloudSEK urged organisations and authorities to stay vigilant and bolster their cybersecurity measures to thwart these malicious actions.
