“Influences on social media” that promote “violent extremist ideologies” are among the biggest cyber threats right now, Satish Chandra Jha, the chairperson of National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), said at Nullcon on March 5. The other threats are data breaches, business espionage, phishing and distributed denial of service attacks, polymorphic malware that change features to be better at contamination, and supply chain contamination. He also said that India is among the five key targets of global cyberattacks. Jha said that the government of India was aware of the challenges this posed and had created the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) in 2014 to counter threats to critical information infrastructure. NCIIPC recognises six sectors as part of critical information infrastructure: transport, power and energy, telecom, government, strategic and public enterprises, and banking, financial services and insurance. During his welcome address, Jha drew attention to NCIIPC’s Responsible Vulnerability Disclosure Program (RVDP) that allows people to report vulnerabilities in Indian critical information infrastructure to the central government. Set up in 2004, the NTRO is the technical intelligence agency under the National Security Advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office. The NCIIPC, an agency under the administrative control of the NTRO, was sent to clean up in mid-September 2019, after a “malicious activity” in the external (information technology, not operational) network of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant was detected earlier that month. Jha has been heading the NTRO since 2018 and has previously been the Special Director in the Intelligence Bureau. NTRO was…
