Information warfare : The Pakistan angle

With the advancement in technology, Information warfare (IW) has emerged as one of the nerve centre in national security and thrown new challenges to the strategic establishments, dependent on cyber infrastructure. IW has helped in masking the identity of combatants and non-combatants, with the expansion of internet, social platforms, deep fakes as well as artificial intelligence. India’s bitter enemy Pakistan along with its allies, including China and Turkey amongst others, are using myriad social media platforms for this purpose. They are engaged in fueling disinformation campaign, with an intention to harm Indian interests, particularly social and religious harmony.

India’s superiority in conventional warfare, between the region’s two nuclear powers viz. India and Pakistan has now transcended beyond the conventional arms race and border skirmishes, with Pakistan increasingly using IW as its new tool to subdue Indian challenge by stoking social/religious divide and subversions. Though India hasn’t faced a cyber-attack of humongous magnitude but the frequency of the Pak-sponsored information-attacks is rapidly growing. Pakistan, in order to gain the strategic advantage, target India’s national security and other fields like economy, corporate entities, defense agencies. This new rivalry in the digital realm is posing a serious threat to internet/cyber-security as well as national security.

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Pakistan has organised special media wings under military/ISI establishments to incite violence across India, especially in Kashmir as well as Muslim dominated Indian states. The 'Advanced Persistent Threats' (APTs), known as ‘Pakistan Cyber Army’ (PCA), comprises groups, having close links with state institutions, for gathering information on their opponent, particularly India. These groups, indulge in propaganda, fake news and deep fakes on social media handles. Significantly, Pak cyber jihadis also run proxy online blogs/websites, like “Kashmir Fight” blog, which regularly publish separatist and extremist material. These cyber operations with the help of selective provocative pictures and getting them retweeted, and running hashtags, push forward anti-India narrative, globally.

Pak-sponsored militant outfits, global jihadist organisations like Islamic State and Al-Qaeda also use these social platforms for their recruitment drives. The usage of encrypted communication applications like WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal by Kashmiri and other jihadists has aided Pak handlers to pose a major challenge to Indian Security Forces (SFs). They found tracing the terrorists’ locations and the resultant encounters difficult until Indian agencies received Pegasus from Israel. The U.S. agencies helped Indian agencies retrieve WhatsApp messages of Jaish cadres, confirming their involvement in the Pulwama attack. Then, they switched to advanced customized apps designed by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies. Many of them, such as “Calculator” and “Skipe,” have no online presence on the Google Play Store, making them even more shadowy and clandestine. Skipe is equipped with advanced features like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), which enables the user to make regular calls to other numbers. Lately, Kashmiri militants are increasingly using a Turkish encrypted communication app called BiP. Owing to nexus between Kashmiri/jihadist groups and Turkey Indian security agencies would face big challenges to retrieve such chats, if needed.

Pakistan's IW goes hand in hand with its cyber-attacks. The techniques employed by Pak cyber groups, include web defacements and spear phishing. Pakistan’s APT on 26th November 2010, which also marked the 2nd anniversary of 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai, launched a cyber-attack on CBI’s web portal. The hackers penetrated into the root directory of CBI website and after defacing the website, the hackers posted in Urdu; “We are sleeping but not dead. Remember PCA? Back off kids or we will smoke your doors off like we did before.’’ Subsequently, the Department of Information Technology discovered that Peshawar based hackers entered the website via Indian Air Force website as both the sites had common database.

Earlier, the probe against the 2008 serial blasts in major Indian cities like Ahmedabad, Delhi, Jaipur, and Bangalore found considerable evidences of cyber warfare or commonly known as ‘cyber-terrorism. Similarly, the IW component was quite evident in the attack (April 3, 2022) on Gorakhnath Temple in Gorakhpur City by one Murtaza Abbasi, an IIT chemical engineer. Abbasi’s radicalisation between 2012-2015 as well his prospective recruitment by Islamic State in Syria by using social media instruments (Telegram, WhatsApp), inflammatory videos fuelling hate against non-Muslims, as well as misinformation on current issues like Hijab row, CAA and NRC showcases the archetypal case of IW.

Despite India, itself now gradually making considerable progress in cyber world, it cannot underestimate the challenges from Pak elements and would do well to take pre-emptive action against such evil Pak designs in cooperation with its allies, including US and Israel, among others.

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.)