China Is Helping Pakistani Hackers Launch Cyber Attacks on India

Anish Dasgupta

September 28, 2020

Transparent Tribe, a suspected Pakistan-based hacker group is allegedly behind an ongoing cyberespionage campaign, dubbed ‘Operation Sidecopy’, against Indian armed forces and defence units. According to researchers at Seqrite, a branch of Quick Heal, the hacker group is being backed by China to gather intelligence against India. Himanshu Dubey, director of Quick Heal Security Labs confirmed this and was also quoted saying, “The Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs), as well as decoy documents were crafted specifically in Indian context”. The campaign used an email with an embedded malicious attachment (a zip file containing an LNK file or a Microsoft word document) which triggers an infection chain. The LNK files had a double extension “Defense-Production-Policy-2020.docx.lnk” and had document icons thus baiting the users. These files were sent to personnel in the Indian defence forces, probably expecting sensitive formation. All information found by Quick Heal has been shared with the Indian government to help officials take appropriate measures. With the rising tensions between China and India, China has been observed targeting key sectors in India through cyber-attacks.

Abridged fromNews18