China Has Become The Biggest Threat To India’s Cyber Security, Know Why

New Delhi : China has been spying thousands of people in India amid his constant attempts to infiltrate in eastern Ladakh and LAC. Amidst all this, a report has revealed that the Chinese company Alibaba is stealing the data of Indian users. Leading English newspaper has disclosed this conspiracy in a report that China was spying through the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party-linked technology company Zhenhua Data Information Technology. After the disclosure of this report, it is being said that China has now become a threat to India’s cyber security.

However, this is not the first time that the Chinese government has been accused of stealing the data of the people of a country. According to reports, China’s ruling party, army and private companies usually conduct such operations in which countries are targeted and data is stolen. Now the question is, what is the reason that China steals the data of the countries of the world?

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China took the decision to strengthen itself in the cyber sector after the 1991 Gulf War. A former Indian Army officer and information warfare expert and author of ‘Engaging China: Indian Interests in the Information Egg’, says Pavitran Rajan, the people of China understood that America’s technology was far ahead of them. They analyzed that if they get into ICT (Information and Communication Technology), they can leap for a few generations and move on. After this, China transformed itself into electronics factories.

Subsequently, in 2003, the Chinese Communist Party and the Central Committee of China’s Central Military Commission officially approved the concept of three warfare, which included psychological, media and legal wars. After that it was decided at the high level that the PLA should be ready to fight the war in the field of information by 2020. Soon after this, the PLA started setting up intelligence units dedicated to cyber operations.

China is keeping an eye on the ICT of the country, it was already known to the US. In February 2013, the US cyber security firm Mandiant, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, published a report that put a full stop to China’s cyber espionage operations. The Mandiant report documented evidence of cyber attacks by PLA unit 61398, whose exact location is in Pudong, Shanghai.

In this regard, former army commander Lt Gen DS Hooda (retd) says that in 2014 the US government found that a Chinese unit had hacked a federal government unit in the Office of Personnel Management and stolen a record of 21 million people. The special thing was that among these people there were 4 to 5 million people who had been American Army and CIA agents.

Why does China steal data from other countries?
In cyber war, bombs and guns are not used but in this the enemy is defeated with cyber and psychological tricks. Under this, the thinking of the public is changed. Rumors and fake news are used to fulfill their intentions. This can be done more easily through data theft.

Experts say that this is the era of data war. When we look at the data in pieces, we do not understand what one can achieve by this, but by gathering these small details together, they can be used as a weapon for a specific purpose. Efforts can be made to breach the internal issues of the country, national policy, security, politics, economy.