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Govt servers used for cyber attacks on China, other countries networks

NEW DELHI: Investigators have unearthed a new and deadly pattern of cyber attacks in which Indian government servers have been used by foreign entities to target the computer networks of third countries. The finding comes at a time when a dispute rages within the government over who should be responsible for protecting Indias critical IT infrastructure. According to sources, foreign entities have penetrated the servers of the National Informatics Centre in recent months and used them to launch attacks on countries, including China. Among other things, the NIC hosts the official websites and emails of the Indian government. These attacks are mostly targeted against government networks of various countries, a source said, adding that the attacks were planned in such a way that investigators from the victim countries would believe that they were launched from Indian government servers. Investigators suspect foreign government entities, including intelligence agencies, have a hand in exploiting NIC servers. They say since the attacks were targeted against Chinese government servers too, there is no scope to blame China. China had in August said that it had suffered about 250,000 cyber attacks from foreign entities, 8% of which had come from India. Sources now believe these attacks could be the result of the NIC servers being exploited by foreign entities. Even as this new angle to Indias IT infrastructure security emerges, a turf battle is raging within the government about who should be protecting it. Sources said both the department of IT and the National Technical Research Organisation-the technical intelligence agency created after the Kargil conflict-had laid claims to being responsible for safeguarding Indias IT infrastructure.

                                                                                                               
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