IASbaba's Flagship Course: Integrated Learning Programme (ILP) - 2024 Read Details
TOPIC: General Studies 2
- India and its neighbourhood
- Government policies – cyber-warfare
In News: Recent media reports claim that Pakistan has launched a cyber warfare against India by spreading fake propaganda on alleged Islamophobia in India. The Hindustan Times reported that authorities in India have linked several social media posts that targeted India and Prime Minister Modi to Pakistan.
Social media witnessed a sudden increase in the number of Pakistani accounts changing their profile names to fake Arab, Christian and Hindu identities to spread misinformation and anti-India propaganda. Security agencies and independent social media users, after investigation, found that the recent hashtags like “Islamophobia in India” on Twitter, were mostly sourced to bots, trolls and people in Pakistan.
Pakistan-based groups have purchased hundreds of domains with “.in” suffix. These newly bought domains will be converted to media outlets and will be used to spread fake news. Since these media outlets will have an Indian domain name, they will carry more trust value among the Indian and international readers who will visit them.
The Reason: Fuel anti-India sentiments in the Gulf countries to put a strain on the ties of India with the west Asian countries
Pakistan’s fake anti-India social media propaganda
The Genesis
The hate mongering is at its peak since the day PM Modi-led government announced its decision to scrap J&K’s special status and divided it into the two union territories.
A full-fledged war against India on social media
Hundreds of fake accounts were activated in the neighbouring country with fake names to create hatred against the Indian leadership and to create a wedge between Hindus and Muslims in India by projecting ruling Bharatiya Janata Party as anti-Muslim.
The Miss from India’s end
India’s cyber warfare is handled by the National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCCC), that comes under the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS). It is the NCCC which coordinates cyber security intelligence and handles national cyber security, and started functioning from April 2015. However, as the last two weeks’ developments show, the NCCC is failing to handle the heat that is coming from Pakistan-based cyber groups.
One of the main problems that makes India vulnerable to organised cyber-attacks is the presence of too many organisations to tackle the cyber threat. In sum, there are six apex bodies, five ministries, almost 30 agencies and five coordinating agencies that make up the cyber organisation in India. India’s very own PMO was hacked in 2011. And all of them work on a ‘defensive’ mode and because of this, no one takes a proactive approach like the Pakistanis have done in the last two weeks
The Way Forward
Connecting the Dots: