06 Mar 2021: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

E. Editorials

Category: SECURITY

1. Patching the gaps in India’s cybersecurity

The article talks about the gaps in India’s cybersecurity and what is needed for a robust cybersecurity.

Context:

• Recently, the Union Power Ministry said that State-sponsored Chinese hacker groups targeted various Indian power centres.
• United States-based cybersecurity firm raised the possibility that the power outage in Mumbai could have been the result of an attack by a Chinese state-sponsored group.

Institutional security:

• In the last two decades, significant efforts have been made by India to craft institutional machinery focusing on cyber resilience spanning several government entities.
• The National Security Council, usually chaired by the National Security Adviser (NSA), plays a key role in shaping India’s cyber policy ecosystem.
• The NSA also chairs the National Information Board, which is meant to be the apex body for cross-ministry coordination on cybersecurity policymaking.
• The National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre established under the National Technical Research Organisation in January 2014 was mandated to facilitate the protection of critical information infrastructure.
• In 2015, the Prime Minister established the office of the National Cyber Security Coordinator who advises the Prime Minister on strategic cybersecurity issues.
• India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), which is the nodal entity responding to various cybersecurity threats to non-critical infrastructure comes under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY).
• The Ministry of Defence has recently upgraded the Defence Information Assurance and Research Agency to establish the Defence Cyber Agency, a tri-service command of the Indian armed forces to coordinate and control joint cyber operations, and craft India’s cyber doctrine.
• The Ministry of Home Affairs oversees multiple coordination centres that focus on law enforcement efforts to address cybercrime, espionage and terrorism.
• The Ministry of External Affairs coordinates India’s cyber diplomacy push, both bilaterally with other countries, and at international fora like the United Nations.

Concerns:

Problems in Institutional Framework:

• The institutional framework, while seeking to create an ‘all of government’ approach to countering and mitigating cybersecurity threats at the national level, has also resulted in concerns around:
  • Effective coordination
  • Overlapping responsibilities
  • Lack of clear institutional boundaries and accountability.

India has been a target earlier:

• India has been attacked by suspected Chinese state-sponsored groups multiple times in the past.
• In 2009, a suspected cyber espionage network dubbed GhostNet was found to be targeting the Tibetan government in exile in India, and many Indian embassies.
  • The vast cyber-espionage operation extensively targeted Indian entities, including military establishments, news publications, and even the National Security Council Secretariat itself.
  • It was found with clear evidence that confidential documents had been accessed by the attackers.
• There were a number of subsequent attacks that targeted India. Such as:
  • Stuxnet which had also taken down nuclear reactors in Iran.
  • Suckfly, which targeted not just government but also private entities including a firm that provided tech support to the National Stock Exchange.
  • Dtrack which first targeted Indian banks, and later the Kudankulam nuclear power plant (Tamil Nadu) in 2019.

Reports not made public:

• Neither the report from the Shadow Network investigation, nor any other, has ever been tabled in Parliament, nor even an edited version made public.

China’s help in deconstructing the attacks:

• While there is much evidence to show that Chinese state-sponsored groups were responsible for many of these attacks, Chinese cybersecurity agencies have also helped the security community in dismantling the infrastructure behind some of these attacks.

False flag attacks:

• Documents released by WikiLeaks show that groups such as the Central Intelligence Agency’s UMBRAGE project have advanced capabilities of misdirecting attribution to another nation-state (“false flag attacks”).
• They leave behind false fingerprints for investigators to find.

Way Forward:

Making the reports public:

• Appraising lawmakers of the scale and depth of the damage wrought is critical to enabling meaningful public discussions and crafting a robust response.

Strengthening the Institutional Framework:

• Given that the question of attribution of a certain cyberattack is questionable, a robust institutional posture and political acumen in publicly dealing with these issues are necessary.
• There is a need for clarity about the institutional framework in India’s National Cyber Security Strategy, which has been drafted by the NSC and is yet to be released.
• Ensuring coherence and coordination between these different actors should be its primary goal.

Doctrine on cyber conflicts:

• India is also yet to clearly articulate a doctrine that holistically captures its approach to cyber conflict. That is, for conducting offensive cyber operations, or the extent and scope of countermeasures against cyber-attacks.
• Unlike India’s approach to other global security regimes like the ‘No First Use’ nuclear posture, the rules of engagement for targeted cyber-attacks are unclear.
• While it might seem like secrecy and ambiguity would provide a tactical advantage when engaging in cyber operations, in an increasingly unstable geopolitical scenario, the absence of a credible cyber deterrence strategy is undesirable.
  • In such a scenario, states and non-state actors alike remain incentivised to undertake low-scale cyber operations for a variety of purposes — espionage, cyber-crime, and even the disruption of critical information infrastructure.

Define the red lines:

• India has been an active participant in processes within the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly dealing with issues of disarmament and international security.
• While the Indian delegation has made public some of their intervention, India’s long-term strategic thinking on core issues of debate at these fora remains relatively unknown.
• India must involve itself in a precise articulation of how international law applies to cyberspace.
  • This could mould the global governance debate to further India’s strategic interests and capabilities.
• In particular, this should include:
  • Positioning on non-binding norms.
  • Positioning on legal obligations on red lines with respect to cyberspace-targets that should be considered illegitimate due to their significance for human life, such as health-care systems, electricity grids, water supply, and financial systems.