Dealing With Cyber Attacks

Context: Recent Chinese cyber-attack on Mumbai´s power supply has exposed concerns and issues related to the rising incidence of cyber-attack.

Significant concerns of Cyber Attacks:

• Newest form of aggression and deterrence: malware inserted into electric grids or other critical infrastructure has exposed the hi-tech dimension of power projection. E.g.
• Increases cyber vulnerability: due to the 21st-century dependence on “smart assets”.
• Causes indirect loss: interruption in power supply, communications, transport, banking and other services can halt normal life and impede military response.
• Carries a degree of deniability: making it a useful tool in geopolitics. For e.g.
  • Russian hackers have twice taken down the Ukrainian power grid and jammed Georgia´s Internet during Ossetia War.
  • A sophisticated worm, Stuxnet, crippled Iran´s nuclear centrifuges.

Way Forward: Implement offensive, defensive and retaliatory measures

• Build technical and counterattack capacity: by meticulously gaming escalatory scenarios.
• • For e.g. the US has seeded malicious code into Russia´s grid as a warning after discovering the Solar Wind attacks.
• Strengthen the institutional framework by a massive expansion of CERTin and other cyber agencies.
• The ability to retaliate has to be backed up by careful calibration and the strategic courage to indulge in brinkmanship.