Opinion In cyber attacks, terror has a found a new face

Before these attacks, the terror was faceless. Some unknown and unidentified terrorists would plant bombs and then remotely detonate them and spread terror all around. Such was their modus operandi that intelligence agencies would scarcely get any information about their activities beforehand to prevent it.

Out of all these attacks, the 26/11 terror attacks were the only attacks in which there was intelligence available that our country, and especially Mumbai, was vulnerable to a sea-bound terror attack.

The Maharashtra Government had constituted the Ram Pradhan Committee to investigate the 26/11 terror attacks and what went wrong. The committee in its report had stated that months before the attacks, there was specific intelligence that there is a possibility of a sea-bound terror attack on Mumbai.

However, after the terror attacks, some agencies claimed that the intelligence was not specific and hence they could not anticipate or prevent it. It was clearly a lame excuse because, as per the Ram Pradhan Committee Report, the intelligence was quite specific and available months before the attacks. Despite this, we failed to thwart the attacks.

After the attacks and based on the recommendations of the Ram Pradhan Committee Report, the Government of India and Government of Maharashtra did a major overhaul in the police department, including arming them with latest, state-of-the-art equipment, arms, and ammunition. Highly skilled and trained commandos of the elite Israeli special forces also trained our commandos to help combat a 26/11-like terror attack. NSG is located in Mumbai now and the Force One is also ready for action.

Despite all the training, machinery, and money spent preparing our police for a 26/11-like terror attack, such terror attacks were never going to happen again. In 15 years it has not happened and is unlikely to happen in the future as well.

That does not mean attacks have stopped or likely to stop in the future. What is going to happen, and something which we are already witnessing around the world, is that the terror warfare landscape has changed. From being foot-on-the-ground, it has gone online, into the ether, and has become faceless and even more dangerous than earlier.

Cyberspace is the place where all the present and future attacks will be done. We have already witnessed it with the Russia–Ukraine war, we are seeing its effects in the Israel–Hamas war. Israel, which boasts of having Mossad, and the world’s best defence and offence weapons and warfare training, was unable to predict and thwart the Hamas attack on October 7. Hamas attacked Israel in an unprecedented manner from all possible ways — air, land and sea. Even before Israel realised what was happening, Hamas had fired more than 7,000 missiles towards Israel, putting to shame the multi-billion-dollar Iron Dome system developed and deployed by Israel in association with the US.

The Iron Dome is a system designed to intercept and destroy short-range rockets and artillery shells fired from distances of 4 to 70 km away, and whose trajectory would take them to an Israeli populated area. This mammoth system failed to stop the 7,000 missiles fired by Hamas on Israel.

The learning from this is that one can never be too prepared. We cannot afford to take things lightly in this highly digitised world where no one knows what is happening and who is doing what.

Cyber warfare is the reality which governments, our police must embrace as quickly as possible and take measures to anticipate, thwart and investigate such attacks.

According to the 2023 India Threat Landscape Report by Singapore-based cybersecurity firm Cyfirma, state sponsored cyberattacks against India went up by a whopping 278 per cent between March 2021-September 2023. The report also found that India is the most targeted country globally, facing 13.7 per cent of all cyber-attacks in the world.

Minister of State (MoS), Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, during a parliamentary session in February this year, revealed that a staggering 13.91 lakh cyber security incidents ravaged India in 2022.

Recently, Apple, which claims to have built the safest mobile phone and an equally impenetrable operating system (iOS), raised a red flag about hacking of several phones including those of politicians and journalists in India.

There is an urgent and critical need for robust cybersecurity measures across the entire country, starting from all government agencies to the private sector and even individual citizens. The government will have to invest heavily in getting the latest cyber-security measures in place and educate the entire country.

We must start educating people at all levels. Children need to be educated in schools, with regards to cyberthreats and how to ensure that all necessary safety and security measures are taken.

Citizens need to be trained. Government departments, agencies need to be given adequate training and provided with the required monetary and equipment backup to make all cyber related issues ironclad.

If India wants to achieve its goal of being a global player and trillion-dollar economy, then it cannot afford to have such weak cyber security and be vulnerable to cyberattacks. If it continues to linger the way it is currently, then the possibility of an online 26/11 or a cyber 26/11 cannot be ruled out.

Writer is director general of police (DGP) (Retired), Maharashtra, former police commissioner of Mumbai and an award-winning author