1,000 cyber attacks on Games, most from China

1,000 cyber attacks on Games, most from China

Six cyber networks of the Delhi Commonwealth Games faced at least 1,000 “potential” attacks in the 12 days of the event that concluded last night — that is, more than three attacks every hour.

Roughly three-fourths of these attempts to breach and paralyse the Games networks originated from China, experts in the Cyber Crisis Management Group (CMG), which was monitoring the networks round the clock, told The Indian Express.

A clutch of attacks — between October 3 and October 5 — originated in Pakistan. Some attempts to penetrate CWG circuits were made from Mumbai as well, top sources in the CMG said.

“In all, our systems detected around 5,000 incidents, about 20 per cent of which could be described as potential attacks. Many were ‘denial-of-service’ attacks, which, if successful, would jam entire networks. But none of these attempts succeeded in penetrating even the first of the three layers of cyber security systems that we had installed,” said a member of the CMG.

The CMG, which operated from an out-of-bounds Cyber Command Centre set up on the seventh floor of the Games Organising Committee (OC) headquarters, included cyber experts from the intelligence agencies, Delhi Police and the Government of India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).

The cyber security infrastructure which successfully detected, identified and neutralized the attacks was set up in only two months after Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar authorized the cyber CMG headed by CERT-In chief Gulshan Rai, who was empowered to disable sections of the CWG computer networks in case of a serious cyber attack.

The six networks, including those of Games data, security, venues, Internet services and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL), were linked to the Command Centre, which constantly monitored over 3,000 computers, 3,000 CCTVs and 1,800 network switches. A special software detected and mapped all “deviant behaviour” on logs, which were examined by the CMG several times a day.

On October 13, National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon visited the Command Centre and reportedly hailed the cyber security initiative as a huge success. While declining to discuss the specifics of the system, Harsh Kumar, the OC’s head of technology, said, “The success of our system was that officials from all agencies such as the NTRO (National Technical Research Organisation) and IB, as well from vendors like MTNL, ECIL (Electronics Corporation of India Ltd) and TCIL (Telecommunications Consultants India Ltd) worked together as a group.”

Added Anil Chowdhary, the OC’s Adviser, Security, “The cyber security systems used in the CWG are now a model which can be replicated in major national networks, and used for cyber security in critical sectors such as railways, aviation and telecommunications.”

envira blog