ISLAMABAD: Fawad Chaudhry, Pakistan’s Minister for Science and Technology,said on Saturday that India has launched a cyber war against Pakistan, daysafter a Europe-based watchdog cracked open a nexus of hundreds of dormantcompanies and ‘fake media outlets’ saying that it is promoting India’sdiplomatic interests around the world, and kickstarting a conversationabout cyber security in Pakistan.
EU DisinfoLab, a nonprofit organization that researches and tacklesdisinformation campaigns, said on Wednesday that it has uncovered 265 fakemedia outlets spread across 65 countries managed by an Indian network, withcontent “designed to influence the European Union and the United Nations byrepeatedly criticizing Pakistan,” the organization said in a report.“It’s a cyber war and they [Indians] are using cyberspace as a weapon,”Chaudhry told Arab News.
“Cyber security has become a major global issue,” he continued, and addedPakistan’s cyber security policy would be announced soon.Investigating the network, the Lab traced digital prints linked to a groupof Indian companies, NGOs, and think tanks, from a little-known companycalled the Srivastava Group.
Dubious news portals all based at the same New Delhi address and mentionedin the watchdog’s investigation included Times of Los Angeles, Times ofPortugal, New Delhi Times, New York Journal American, Times of North Koreaand The International Institute for Non-Aligned Studies (IINS), which isthe same organization that reportedly invited 27 members of the EuropeanParliament to meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and visit Kashmir,amid international attention on curbs on free speech and allegations ofhuman rights violations in Kashmir.
On Aug. 5, New Delhi flooded Kashmir valley with troops, enforced a curfewand communications blackout, and scrapped the special legal status of thedisputed region which both India and Pakistan own in part but claim infull. Since then, New Delhi has denied its part in any human rights abuseson different media outlets- many of which have turned out to be zombiewebsites.
Foreign Affairs expert Qamar Cheema said India wanted Pakistan to becomeglobally isolated.“It is India’s declared position to isolate Pakistan diplomatically andeconomically,” Cheema told Arab News.
“Both countries are vying to influence the domestic and internationalaudience about their strategic and tactical narratives, but India hasdeveloped cobwebs in the virtual world. This is because of India’s ITachievements and expanding global reach,” he said.
“Pakistan is using traditional tools of diplomacy. India is usingtraditional tools, its web armies and data mining techniques to influencepublic opinions to which Pakistan may not be able to respond, lackingresources and state of the art IT infrastructure,” he continued.
The fake news websites republished contents from Russia Today and Voice ofAmerica, but the report said they also found a large number of articlesrelated to minorities in Pakistan.
In Geneva, the investigating group found that timesofgeneva.com – an online‘newspaper’ self-professed to be ‘approaching 35 years in business’ –published and produced videos covering events and demonstrations thatcriticized Pakistan’s role in the Kashmir conflict.
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“Media and cyber space are increasingly being used as weapons to influenceevents and to project national interests. India has been doing it for manyyears, whether it is hacking our command and control centers… or plantingstories about Pakistan,” Ambassador Vice Admiral (R) Khan Hasham BinSaddique, President of Islamabad Policy Research Institute, told Arab News.
“India’s prowess in the IT field has undermined our national securityinterests,” he said. “It is time that Pakistan invests in human resourceand technological competence because media and cyberspace are thecomponents of 21st century warfare.”
In April, Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, Minister for Information Technologyand Telecommunications, had announced that a comprehensive cyber securitypolicy would be introduced soon.
Domestically however, the country has placed great importance on counteringand policing the spread of content and information through special cyberlaws– but these were specific to cyber-crime not cyber-security, expertssay.
“We have been creating cyber crime laws but not a cyber security policy,”Ammar Jafri, former head of the Federal Investigation Agency’s NationalResponse Center for Cyber Crime wing, told Arab News.Jafri was instrumental in drafting Pakistan’s first cyber security policyin 2012 which is still pending approval.
“We are one of the few countries in the world without a national computeremergency response team, cyber security policy and cyber securitystrategy,” he said.“There are plenty of challenges that Pakistan faces in cyberspace that needgovernment initiatives to confront. We do not need to reinvent the wheel.The cyber security bill can be reactivated with certain amendments.”
“This is the cyber era and we need to spend on cyber weapons to counterenemies of the state on the internet,” he continued.
Pakistan is one of the least cyber-safe countries in the world according toa 2019 Comparitech study sourced from Kaspersky Lab, InternationalTelecommunication Union, and Center for Strategic and International Studies.
