Most cyber attacks on India show Chinese IP address: NTRO

NEW DELHI: Cyber attacks have grown nearly five times in the last three years and most of them have been found to be originating from the IP addresses located in China.

"Most of the cyber attacks that we have tracked show IP addresses located in China but we are unable to establish if the attacker is from China. We need international cooperation for handling such crimes," NTRO Director of Cyber Security Operations Alok Vijayant said at Ground Zero Summit.

Government's cyber security arm Computer Emergency Response Team-India (CERT-In) reported 62,189 cyber security incidents in the first five months of the current calendar year.

These attacks have been found to be originating from the cyber space of a number of countries including the US, Europe, Brazil, Turkey, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Algeria and the UAE, according to the official report.

The National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) Director said that foreign countries are investing heavily in cyber espionage to gather crucial data and India needs to seriously consider a strategy to counter this strategy.

"Indian has a dearth of talent. In most of the cases Indians find cyber security loophole quickly with its solution but people may get tempted with high price paid in under ground market. Payment per exploit is as good as 15,000 euros and higher than that," Vijayant said.

Cyber security expert Greg Walton showed his research on an attack mounted on Tibetan government in exile which showed its origin in Chengdu city of China.

"The attacker hacked e-mail id of a senior minister of Tibetan government in exile in Dharamshala and through that id they even attacked India's ministry of external affairs," Walton said.

India has seen increase in cyber attacks from about 13,000 in 2011 to 62,000 till mid-2014. The country has been unable to identify cyber criminals in majority of the case due to absence of international cooperation on the issue.