Indian hackers attack defence and government establishments of Pakistan

 Two India-based cyber hacking groups have attacked defence and government establishments of Pakistan and some West Asian countries last month, a person with a direct knowledge of the matter told.

The two groups Shakti Campaign and VVV carried out the attacks, including one on Pakistan's defence establishments, that were very basic in nature but effective, an international cyber security expert told.

Investigators in those countries even suspect that these hackers may have the blessings of the Indian government, the person said.

Shakti, a hacker group that was shut down in 2010, became operational again last year.

The attacks were in the form of spear phishing, where an email with an attachment is sent to targeted individuals to gain unauthorised access to confidential data.

"We have done research into these attacks and it was found that in some cases the websites of some news agencies were spoofed to attract clicks," said Kurt Baumgartner, principal security researcher, global research and analysis, at Kaspersky Lab.

Baumgartner, who is based out of the US, told ET that the countries that were attacked have complained about the incidents to India through official channels.

Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow-headquartered company listed in the UK, is one of the largest players in cyber software security.

The Indian groups' attacks, known as APT, or advanced personalised threats, have only targeted government organisations and establishments and the main purpose of the exercise was to collect information.

According to industry trackers based in India, the country has become aggressive in the cyber space since last year.

"Earlier India's cyber presence was only limited to defence, but now we repay in kind," a person close to the development had told ET about a month back.

The person said attacks from Pakistan are mainly limited to defacing of Indian government websites. "Like recently they defaced a government website of Chhattisgarh government, only to realise that four Pakistani websites hoisted Indian flags," he bragged.

Pakistani and Indian cyber hackers have been regularly attacking each other. About a couple of months ago, two private Indian banks were attacked.

Shakti is a notorious group that operated from India and attacked some European telecom companies around 2009 before it shut down. The group has now restarted its attacks, this time on government institutes and in a separate geography.

The modus operandi of Shakti and VVV are slightly different. Shakti normally sends news articles with provocative headlines to some targeted individuals while VVV sends links to interesting mobile applications.

In the world of cyber security these are called phishing attacks and are very basic in nature, yet these two groups have been extremely successful in their past attempts.