India and Pakistan have fought four wars over Kashmir since 1947. In addition to the full-fledged conventional wars, Pakistan has sponsored and supported a proxy insurgency in Kashmir over the last three decades. The proxy war began by supporting terrorist organizations like the Jammu-Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) and Hizbul Mujahidin (HM). However, over the last three decades, the proxy war has evolved and become highly sophisticated and complex: the rapid spread of the internet and mobile phones led planners within Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to realize the potential of information technology revolutions in Kashmir.
Notably, both India and Pakistan cannot be directly blamed for all cyberattacks in which they target officials, business groups and individuals, and foreign state institutions. Instead, they prefer to operate with front groups. Netscout, a U.S.-based tech company, identified six Indian and three Pakistani advanced persistent threat (APT) groups, which as per the company’s findings were state-backed hackers. India-linked APTs included Lucky Elephant, Donot Team, Patchwork Group, and Sidewinder Group, and the Pakistani group was called Transparent Tribe. Reportedly, both sides made massive use of phishing to lure targets into opening infected emails, messages, and files to steal classified information. In 2019, when the tension between the two nuclear adversaries was at its peak, such attacks increased manifold.
Beginning of the Internet Era...
Read Full Story: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/techland-when-great-power-competition-meets-digital-world/how-pakistan-brought-cyberwar-kashmir
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