India's network centric warfare

Superdefender

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India beefs up online defence capabilities with new tri-service CYBER SQUAD as threat from Chinese and Pakistan hack attack gets real
By Ajit K Dubey
17:14 EST 03 Mar 2017, updated 19:39 EST 03 Mar 2017

The US and Soviet Union had their Cold War from the mid-to-late 20th century, and now, many years later, India now finds itself fighting a Cold Code War with its nosy neighbours China and Pakistan.
In a bid to enhance its combat capabilities in the virtual domain, the defence ministry is working towards establishing a new cyber agency to tackle attempts by Chinese and Pakistani hackers to break into its systems and networks.
'The tri-services integrated defence staff (IDS) is coming up with a unit to tackle the cyber warfare domain and it will be staffed with personnel from all the three services,' senior government sources told Mail Today.

The IDS is a tri-services organisation that works directly under the defence ministry but has officers and men from the army, navy as well as air force, and is responsible for tasks and projects involving the assets and men from all three services.
'The forces have already started pooling their resources in the cyber domain under the new agency, which would be headed by a major general-rank officer.
'The organisation will have both offensive and defensive capabilities in cyber warfare,' said the sources.
The development comes against the backdrop of around 22,000 pages of data purportedly related to submarines that a French government-owned company was building for the Indian navy being leaked to the media last year.

There have been thousands of online attacks on various government websites and systems including defence-related ones in recent years, with fingers often pointing towards China and Pakistan.
Until recently the army, navy and air force have their own separate cells dealing with cyber issues and they have also developed individual networks for safe communication and data exchange.
The information networks created by the forces are state of the art and are capable of detecting any violation at centralised locations within a few microseconds.
'If anybody puts in a pen drive in a computer of the military network, our men sitting in Delhi and other centralised locations can detect it within no time and prevent any leakage or attack immediately,' said the sources.
'This step of creating a new cyber agency, which would be a precursor to a cyber command, is in the right direction.
'Now the focus should be on creating infrastructure for manufacturing totally indigenous information and communication technology equipment,' said information warfare expert Pavithran Rajan.

To test its capabilities, the new agency has also carried out its first cyber warfare exercise under which Indian forces carried out attacks on their own networks to check for loopholes and steps required to strengthen the system, the sources informed.
'The forces deduced that cyber should be the first agency to be raised for dealing with the increasing instances of attacks on military networks and systems,' they said.
The command of the new agency would be on rotational basis for the three services, which means that if it is first headed by an army officer, he would be succeeded by navy and air force officers.
The head of the unit would report to the chief of integrated defence staff Lt Gen Satish Dua who heads the organisation at present.

The government had deferred the demand for creation of new commands for cyber, special forces and space under senior lieutenant general rank officers and asked the forces to first create capabilities for such commands.
The decision to put off the creation of new commands was taken soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi told senior military commanders that while global powers were reducing the number of their personnel, Indian forces were continuously demanding expansion in size.
The armed forces had initiated the demand for creation of three new commands during the UPA government where the three services had decided to take one command each for themselves, setting up three army commander- equivalent positions.
The country has only two operational tri-services commands including the strategically located Andaman and Nicobar command in Port Blair, which will now likely have an officer from the navy as its head permanently.
The other tri-services organisation is the strategic forces command, which looks after the nuclear arsenal including the Agni-series missiles for the nuclear command authority headed by the Prime Minister.
The government is now considering a four-star officer appointment in the form of permanent chairman for the chiefs of staff committee.
All tri-services issues are expected to go to him once the office is created.

IAF to get hack-proof laptops to prevent online espionage
After relentless attacks by Chinese and Pakistani hackers to break into military personnel's computers, the Indian Air Force is planning to provide hack-proof laptops to its personnel which would help them prevent cases of cyber espionage.
The IAF is taking this step after it was observed that personal computers or laptops used for surfing internet and official assignments, are getting hacked by outsiders as it is relatively very easy to break into such systems.
'The IAF is planning to provide laptops to its personnel for official work which will be internet-disabled to do away with the scope of getting cyber-attacked,' sources told Mail Today.

The laptops would be connected with the Air Force Network (AFNET) which is used for exchange of data and information across the country for which it has laid down a special optical fibre network, they said.
The IAF is moving ahead with this plan at a time when there have been cases where personal computers of officers have been hacked and official information has also been stolen from them.
'All IAF personnel have been told that they should be careful when they are using internet on personal system…they would be taken to task if any official document or information is leaked or stolen in the process.
'They should not use personal laptops for official work or for storing any work-related data,' the sources said.
It would be difficult for the personnel to use the laptops when on leave as the system would connect with the AFNET which works only inside or near air force bases.
The Air Force has been taking a number of steps to prevent hackers from stealing classified information and has been the first among the services to arm its personnel with smartphones to protect them from offensives.

Source Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahom...-online-offensive-defensive-capabilities.html
 

scatterStorm

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India beefs up online defence capabilities with new tri-service CYBER SQUAD as threat from Chinese and Pakistan hack attack gets real
By Ajit K Dubey
17:14 EST 03 Mar 2017, updated 19:39 EST 03 Mar 2017

The US and Soviet Union had their Cold War from the mid-to-late 20th century, and now, many years later, India now finds itself fighting a Cold Code War with its nosy neighbours China and Pakistan.
In a bid to enhance its combat capabilities in the virtual domain, the defence ministry is working towards establishing a new cyber agency to tackle attempts by Chinese and Pakistani hackers to break into its systems and networks.
'The tri-services integrated defence staff (IDS) is coming up with a unit to tackle the cyber warfare domain and it will be staffed with personnel from all the three services,' senior government sources told Mail Today.

The IDS is a tri-services organisation that works directly under the defence ministry but has officers and men from the army, navy as well as air force, and is responsible for tasks and projects involving the assets and men from all three services.
'The forces have already started pooling their resources in the cyber domain under the new agency, which would be headed by a major general-rank officer.
'The organisation will have both offensive and defensive capabilities in cyber warfare,' said the sources.
The development comes against the backdrop of around 22,000 pages of data purportedly related to submarines that a French government-owned company was building for the Indian navy being leaked to the media last year.

There have been thousands of online attacks on various government websites and systems including defence-related ones in recent years, with fingers often pointing towards China and Pakistan.
Until recently the army, navy and air force have their own separate cells dealing with cyber issues and they have also developed individual networks for safe communication and data exchange.
The information networks created by the forces are state of the art and are capable of detecting any violation at centralised locations within a few microseconds.
'If anybody puts in a pen drive in a computer of the military network, our men sitting in Delhi and other centralised locations can detect it within no time and prevent any leakage or attack immediately,' said the sources.
'This step of creating a new cyber agency, which would be a precursor to a cyber command, is in the right direction.
'Now the focus should be on creating infrastructure for manufacturing totally indigenous information and communication technology equipment,' said information warfare expert Pavithran Rajan.

To test its capabilities, the new agency has also carried out its first cyber warfare exercise under which Indian forces carried out attacks on their own networks to check for loopholes and steps required to strengthen the system, the sources informed.
'The forces deduced that cyber should be the first agency to be raised for dealing with the increasing instances of attacks on military networks and systems,' they said.
The command of the new agency would be on rotational basis for the three services, which means that if it is first headed by an army officer, he would be succeeded by navy and air force officers.
The head of the unit would report to the chief of integrated defence staff Lt Gen Satish Dua who heads the organisation at present.

The government had deferred the demand for creation of new commands for cyber, special forces and space under senior lieutenant general rank officers and asked the forces to first create capabilities for such commands.
The decision to put off the creation of new commands was taken soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi told senior military commanders that while global powers were reducing the number of their personnel, Indian forces were continuously demanding expansion in size.
The armed forces had initiated the demand for creation of three new commands during the UPA government where the three services had decided to take one command each for themselves, setting up three army commander- equivalent positions.
The country has only two operational tri-services commands including the strategically located Andaman and Nicobar command in Port Blair, which will now likely have an officer from the navy as its head permanently.
The other tri-services organisation is the strategic forces command, which looks after the nuclear arsenal including the Agni-series missiles for the nuclear command authority headed by the Prime Minister.
The government is now considering a four-star officer appointment in the form of permanent chairman for the chiefs of staff committee.
All tri-services issues are expected to go to him once the office is created.

IAF to get hack-proof laptops to prevent online espionage
After relentless attacks by Chinese and Pakistani hackers to break into military personnel's computers, the Indian Air Force is planning to provide hack-proof laptops to its personnel which would help them prevent cases of cyber espionage.
The IAF is taking this step after it was observed that personal computers or laptops used for surfing internet and official assignments, are getting hacked by outsiders as it is relatively very easy to break into such systems.
'The IAF is planning to provide laptops to its personnel for official work which will be internet-disabled to do away with the scope of getting cyber-attacked,' sources told Mail Today.

The laptops would be connected with the Air Force Network (AFNET) which is used for exchange of data and information across the country for which it has laid down a special optical fibre network, they said.
The IAF is moving ahead with this plan at a time when there have been cases where personal computers of officers have been hacked and official information has also been stolen from them.
'All IAF personnel have been told that they should be careful when they are using internet on personal system…they would be taken to task if any official document or information is leaked or stolen in the process.
'They should not use personal laptops for official work or for storing any work-related data,' the sources said.
It would be difficult for the personnel to use the laptops when on leave as the system would connect with the AFNET which works only inside or near air force bases.
The Air Force has been taking a number of steps to prevent hackers from stealing classified information and has been the first among the services to arm its personnel with smartphones to protect them from offensives.

Source Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahom...-online-offensive-defensive-capabilities.html
If anybody who knows what cyber security domain is they already know that Chinese hackers aren't hacking per se, they simply have enough computing power to break past secure encrypted channels via brute force methods and packet sniffing. It has been acknowledged that the Chinese are running the fastest super computer around the globe with peak computing power of 93 PFLOPS and although they say that it's been utilized for "research" purposes, they are used to crack highly secure encrypted server access. But they are smart, they aren't targeting the front door because any Cyber attack leaves some trail behind them(usually node hop timings), but instead the back door, they target government officials laptops and PC's because usually the password are of "dictionary" type, a bot will than allow super computing power to calculate permutations and combinations and poof password is guessed in milliseconds! If someone's playing smart like using alpha-numeric with a character string length of about 10-12, it would be able to crack in an hr or so. Once they get in, all they have to do is to install a Torjan Horse. It will sit dormant there until the end user makes some changes and it will become active, recording every activity and logging it and sending back to it's masters, when they are satisfied of what they've got the simply program the Torjan horse to self destruct.

Hence our scientist pretty much knew this and started an initiative to develop our own Operating System, with our own private nodes with encryption schemes ranging from 125 to 512 SHA-1 or SHA-2 schemes(funny how they both are being designed by the NSA). But that was not enough the chinkies were still attacking, even the smart phones as they serve as adhoc means to spy and sniff data across.

The good things is that since our own fibre-optic private node will be isolated from the outside nodes, and officials using offline software to do there task, it will reduce such attacks.
 

charlie

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If anybody who knows what cyber security domain is they already know that Chinese hackers aren't hacking per se, they simply have enough computing power to break past secure encrypted channels via brute force methods and packet sniffing. It has been acknowledged that the Chinese are running the fastest super computer around the globe with peak computing power of 93 PFLOPS and although they say that it's been utilized for "research" purposes, they are used to crack highly secure encrypted server access. But they are smart, they aren't targeting the front door because any Cyber attack leaves some trail behind them(usually node hop timings), but instead the back door, they target government officials laptops and PC's because usually the password are of "dictionary" type, a bot will than allow super computing power to calculate permutations and combinations and poof password is guessed in milliseconds! If someone's playing smart like using alpha-numeric with a character string length of about 10-12, it would be able to crack in an hr or so. Once they get in, all they have to do is to install a Torjan Horse. It will sit dormant there until the end user makes some changes and it will become active, recording every activity and logging it and sending back to it's masters, when they are satisfied of what they've got the simply program the Torjan horse to self destruct.

Hence our scientist pretty much knew this and started an initiative to develop our own Operating System, with our own private nodes with encryption schemes ranging from 125 to 512 SHA-1 or SHA-2 schemes(funny how they both are being designed by the NSA). But that was not enough the chinkies were still attacking, even the smart phones as they serve as adhoc means to spy and sniff data across.

The good things is that since our own fibre-optic private node will be isolated from the outside nodes, and officials using offline software to do there task, it will reduce such attacks.
No chinese or american can do a brute force attack on AES or DES level encryption, now almost ever milltary bases (US) are coverd with nsa 2 level encryption.

I dont know where you guys hear this kind of thing, if you combine all computing power in the world then also its not enough to break in 128 bit encryption forget about 256.

NSA as far as I know they dont design any encryption, they ask companies like Harris and moto to design it. Sha 1 and 2 are not encryption they are one way hash function.

Even des level on encryption cannot be broken forget about aes.

Again in our training they keep on reminding one thing is even though the system is isolated does not mean it not prone to attack and they showed us a graph of autonoms attacks vs attacks done by individual. autonoms attacks highly sophisticated and tend to damage more.

Even the usb with the OTAR keys are twice or thrice encryted NSA policy are crazy when it comes to encryption they make sure that even they cannot hack it.

Its not easy to break into laptop or pc either now everyone uses a rsa token even small compnies have started using those normally all the high secure things have two level of authentication, either by phone when you call the number it will give you a key or by rsa token.

So password as well as phone or token is used so 2 levels auth.
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cmvp/documents/140-1/140sp/140sp911.pdf
 
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Ra8ul

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Want to know if India has a standalone fibre optics intranet within India for defense and space separately.
 

charlie

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Want to know if India has a standalone fibre optics intranet within India for defense and space separately.
Even the US has no separate standalone netwok throughout entire country, it’s not possible for a country as big as India to have a separate network for defence.
 

Ra8ul

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Even the US has no separate standalone netwok throughout entire country, it’s not possible for a country as big as India to have a separate network for defence.
With China,Pakistan,Bangladesh,Myanmar and 6000 km sea the threat we face doesn't comes close to comparing if china attacks from himalayas and sea i feel exchange of secured data might be crucial.If we use tactical nukes on tibet china does not care 80% population lives on eastern China but if they use rail gun which is 500 km range half of India with 60% pop is in the range which low cost. Only thing which will deter China is keep our presence on eastern side i do not think Russia or Korea will allow Indian boots in there terriotory, japan does not work because we want ground base where large batallion can be deployed sea to land transfer is costly and time consuming by that time game will be over or 40% soldiers will perish crossing sea.

Only ways is Economy waiting to see US-China trade deal if US gives up that means US has been trying to break India Russia defense collaboration in a way India is funding Russian defense industry.Russia problem is they do not have a warm water port crimea is the closest they have but not a port to sell their commodities including oil and gas.You can sell only if you can guarantee year round sale of gas and crude which Russia cannot so they use pipe line to sell.
 

Okabe Rintarou

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Want to know if India has a standalone fibre optics intranet within India for defense and space separately.
Ever heard of ASCON? Most critical channels in ASCON are a dedicated Fibre Optic Network. The entire network connects all Indian Army static areas and also connects to the AREN which is the mobile communications network for last mile connectivity of operational formations/units.
 

Ra8ul

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Have read that but i was not sure if it was internet or intranet reason i said separate network for defense use.electronic countermeasure to disrupt all radio waves will hamper sensor data and radar integration over a vast area in case of disruption dedicated fibre optics network will help. Assuming evase dropping identification and prevention is part of network.
 
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CCS clears communication network for Indian Army, to be done by ITI
 

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AFNET to Herald Network Centric Operations in Indian Air Force | India Defence

AFNET to Herald Network Centric Operations in Indian Air Force

Next week, the Indian Air Force (IAF) would usher in a modern, state-of-the-art digital information grid by dedicating Air Force Network (AFNET), a fully secure and reliable network to the nation making it a true net-centric combat force. The AFNET replaces the IAF's old communication network set-up using the tropo-scatter technology of the 1950s.

This monumental achievement also marks the successful clearance of one milestone for release of radio spectrum, a very valuable but finite resource. Defence Minister, Shri AK Antony will launch the AFNET services of the IAF at a special function to be held at New Delhi, on Tuesday. Union Telecom Minister, Shri A Raja will also be present at the function.

The IAF project is part of the overall mission to network all three services. The mission comes in the backdrop of an IT Roadmap document of the Defence Ministry stipulating automation, simulated training and mandatory computer proficiency in the services.

IAF has taken up a mandate to create and maintain an assured, dedicated, secure and inter-operable communication network along with associated services to provide real time, instantaneous transfer of information between Sensors, Command and Control (C2) centres and Shooters. In addition, IAF aspires to use communication network and IT-enabled infrastructure for all other operational, techno-logistics and administrative functions to leverage development in this field to enhance efficiency, cost-effectiveness and ease of administration.

While all three services are engaged in large scale automation and computer-based networking, the IAF is the first among the three to complete the project of interlinking major installations throughout the country on a high bandwidth network.

All major formations and static establishments have been linked through a secure Wide Area Network (WAN) and are accessible through data communication lines. The nationwide programme was launched by the IAF in collaboration with the private industry to accelerate the use of Information Technology (IT) as well as to link all field units using a dedicated satellite.

AFNET incorporates the latest traffic transportation technology in form of IP (Internet Protocol) packets over the network using Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS). A large VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) layer with stringent quality of service enforcement will facilitate robust, high quality voice, video and conferencing solutions.

Integrated Air Command and Control System (IACCS), an automated command and control system for Air Defence (AD) operations will ride the AFNET backbone integrating all ground-based and airborne sensors, AD weapon systems and C2 nodes. Subsequent integration with other services networks and civil radars will provide an integrated Air Situation Picture to operators to carry out AD role.

AFNET will prove to be an effective force multiplier for intelligence analysis, mission planning and control, post-mission feedback and related activities like maintenance, logistics and administration. A comprehensive design with multi-layer security precautions for "Defence in Depth" have been planned by incorporating encryption technologies, Intrusion Prevention Systems to ensure the resistance of the IT system against information manipulation and eavesdropping.
 

charlie

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If you guys are interested in real world problems this is a really good video to watch Collapsing the Stack. communications and limited sensors in SA is discussed.

 

kj2222

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Looking for core team members for a citizen-volunteer based Information Warfare force initiative. If this is something that sounds interesting to you, would love to have a chat!
 

Tshering22

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Looking for core team members for a citizen-volunteer based Information Warfare force initiative. If this is something that sounds interesting to you, would love to have a chat!
DM me more about this please.
 

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