Panther 57
PROFESSIONAL
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2013
- Messages
- 2,536
- Reaction score
- 22
- Country
- Location
A ‘Bermuda Triangle’ off Chenai, or Cyber attacks?
Posted on November 26, 2016 by Bharat Karnad
Certain circles in the military and elsewhere in the Indian government dealing with extremely sensitive matters are abuzz with how the forward air defence radar in Avantipur was knocked out Wednesday, November 23 evening and how it stayed down until the next day, Thursday, November 24, when a slapdash air surveillance system was patched together. This was only the latest in a series of mysterious and unexplained incidents that have left a lot of people really worried.
The other recent incidents that have puzzled investigators was the disappearance of several aircraft in the last couple of years. In March 2015 a Coast Guard Dornier went off the radar off Chenai, and was never heard from again. A few months later a Navy Dornier likewise did a disappearing act. Then on July 22 this year an IAF An-32 transport aircraft carrying 29 military and DRDO personnel too vanished into thin air in the same general area in the Bay of Bengal. It was on the Chennai-Andaman run, and as it was, according to demine Manohar Parrikar, one of the upgraded lot of An-32s, it may be safely assumed that technological decrepitude was not the reason.
Either, unbeknownst to every body, there is a “Bermuda Triangle” operating somewhere off the Chennai coast that simply gobbles up whole planes. Or, taken together with the event of the downing of the Avantipur radar that left the entire approaches to Jammu & Kashmir and exposed without any air surveillance capability for some 12-15 hours mid-week, there is some nasty business afoot.
Many in the know are beginning to believe that rather than some freak occurrence of Nature, the dematerialization — what else can one call it, considering that not a trace of debris or bodies or any telltale signs of accident have been found despite extensive searches by aircraft and naval vessels? — of the three aircraft and the downing of the Avantipur radar are the result of concerted cyber attacks.
These same experts point out that the Indian radar system can be switched off by remote means, such as through penetration through the Net and can even be made to turn on and target national assets by, for instance, mis-identifying IAF aircraft as adversary planes to possibly occasion fratricidal kills. And because the country relies wholly on imported hardware there is every the likelihood, as the former science adviser to the Defence minister and DRDO head Dr Avinash Chander had publicly warned, of embedded bugs in the three aircraft being distantly activated, or the system penetration being such as to even spoof information on guidance equipment onboard to misdirect the planes.
That the Indian government and military communications systems are entirely penetrated is easy enough to presume. Despite official warnings to everyone in the government, the armed services, the police orgs, and paramils, to not use gmail or yahoo, and to not hold long and sustained conversations on unsecured mobile phones, officers/officials any and everywhere and especially at the highest levels of government and in the PMO are seen routinely do be doing just this. With indiscipline and carelessness as the normal, India’s adversaries — even a lowly Pakistan with minimal cyber warfare/cyber terrorism capabilities, will always have it easy, what to speak of our more capable friends China and the United States. And given the fact that there is no expertise in government or in the Indian military or in the intelligence agencies for “penetration analysis”, and that the capacity of the National Intelligence Agency in all respects is pretty basic at best the country is, to use an American idiom, “up s..t creek”.
@WebMaster @fatman17 @springonion @Rashid Mahmood @F.O.X
Posted on November 26, 2016 by Bharat Karnad
Certain circles in the military and elsewhere in the Indian government dealing with extremely sensitive matters are abuzz with how the forward air defence radar in Avantipur was knocked out Wednesday, November 23 evening and how it stayed down until the next day, Thursday, November 24, when a slapdash air surveillance system was patched together. This was only the latest in a series of mysterious and unexplained incidents that have left a lot of people really worried.
The other recent incidents that have puzzled investigators was the disappearance of several aircraft in the last couple of years. In March 2015 a Coast Guard Dornier went off the radar off Chenai, and was never heard from again. A few months later a Navy Dornier likewise did a disappearing act. Then on July 22 this year an IAF An-32 transport aircraft carrying 29 military and DRDO personnel too vanished into thin air in the same general area in the Bay of Bengal. It was on the Chennai-Andaman run, and as it was, according to demine Manohar Parrikar, one of the upgraded lot of An-32s, it may be safely assumed that technological decrepitude was not the reason.
Either, unbeknownst to every body, there is a “Bermuda Triangle” operating somewhere off the Chennai coast that simply gobbles up whole planes. Or, taken together with the event of the downing of the Avantipur radar that left the entire approaches to Jammu & Kashmir and exposed without any air surveillance capability for some 12-15 hours mid-week, there is some nasty business afoot.
Many in the know are beginning to believe that rather than some freak occurrence of Nature, the dematerialization — what else can one call it, considering that not a trace of debris or bodies or any telltale signs of accident have been found despite extensive searches by aircraft and naval vessels? — of the three aircraft and the downing of the Avantipur radar are the result of concerted cyber attacks.
These same experts point out that the Indian radar system can be switched off by remote means, such as through penetration through the Net and can even be made to turn on and target national assets by, for instance, mis-identifying IAF aircraft as adversary planes to possibly occasion fratricidal kills. And because the country relies wholly on imported hardware there is every the likelihood, as the former science adviser to the Defence minister and DRDO head Dr Avinash Chander had publicly warned, of embedded bugs in the three aircraft being distantly activated, or the system penetration being such as to even spoof information on guidance equipment onboard to misdirect the planes.
That the Indian government and military communications systems are entirely penetrated is easy enough to presume. Despite official warnings to everyone in the government, the armed services, the police orgs, and paramils, to not use gmail or yahoo, and to not hold long and sustained conversations on unsecured mobile phones, officers/officials any and everywhere and especially at the highest levels of government and in the PMO are seen routinely do be doing just this. With indiscipline and carelessness as the normal, India’s adversaries — even a lowly Pakistan with minimal cyber warfare/cyber terrorism capabilities, will always have it easy, what to speak of our more capable friends China and the United States. And given the fact that there is no expertise in government or in the Indian military or in the intelligence agencies for “penetration analysis”, and that the capacity of the National Intelligence Agency in all respects is pretty basic at best the country is, to use an American idiom, “up s..t creek”.
@WebMaster @fatman17 @springonion @Rashid Mahmood @F.O.X
