Chinese hackers to target games site

Security agencies worried about spying and sabotage

China may not be a Commonwealth nation, but that may not stop hackers from the communist country playing the Games virtually. Which means that the Commonwealth Games website is facing an impending cyber attack.u00a0 Hundreds of secret documents, including classified files, were stolen by these hackers from ministries and government bodies recently.


mouse trap: A webshot of the Commonwealth Games website.

Security agencies, which are aggressively patrolling the cyber space, have recently witnessed a sudden spurt in traffic coming from China and they expect hackers to start attacks when the Games begin as during this period citizens of Commonwealth countries will be visiting the CWG website.

Based on historical experience, many hackers seeking to make a name for themselves could see this as the right time. So the Commonwealth Games site may face attacks from individual hackers, groups, organisations, as well as other countries and those with various political motivations.

"Looking at past records, the Chinese were able to compromise sensitive accounts and data from government agencies. In order to cross-check their cyber infrastructure during Beijing Olympics, Chinese hackers launched simulated attacks on their own website. China has always been aggressive towards India and at a time like this when several countries are focusing on India, it's the appropriate time for them to attack as a show of strength," said Dhruv Soi, director of Torrid networks, which also carried out an audit of the CWG site. It is also been discovered that the Commonwealth Games website has been facing problems for long.

On various occasions the site has been down for hours but so far no official statement has been made regarding cyber attacks on the website. The site is one of the major platforms to book online tickets for the Games and also provides updates of recent news, pictures and points tally (this will become active during the Games).u00a0 "There are a few vulnerabilities on the site which we highlighted earlier but they have not been fixed yet. This loophole may result in hiccups," Dhruv added.

The government is worried about spying and sabotage from neighbouring countries, particularly China and Pakistan, after a spate of assaults on its computer systems in recent times. The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto said in April that a clique of hackers based in China had conducted extensive spying operations in India, pilfering confidential documents from the defence ministry. The government is giving shape to an IT infrastructure setup manned by a small army of software professionals to spy on the classified data of hostile nations by hacking into their computer systems.

Though Beijing strongly denied any role in the attacks, investigations pointed to the Chinese government's tacit approval of the spying operations. According to the government proposal, the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) along with Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) will be responsible for creating cyber-offensive capabilities. NTRO is a key government agency that gathers technical intelligence while DIA is tasked with collating inputs from the Navy, Army and Air Force.