APT Groups of India involved in Cyber Warfare

APT Groups of India involved in Cyber Warfare

An advanced persistent threat (APT) is a stealthy threat actor, typically a nation-state or state-sponsored group, which gains unauthorized access to a computer network and remains undetected for an extended period. In recent times, the term may also refer to non-state-sponsored groups conducting large-scale targeted intrusions for specific goals. Such threat actors' motivations are typically political or economic.

Following are some of the Indian APT Groups :

• SideWinder: The highly active cyber-espionage entity known as SideWinder has been plaguing governments and enterprises since 2012. SideWinder’s most of the activity is heavily focused on South Asia and East Asia, with the group likely supporting Indian political interests.
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• Dropping Elephant: This is allegedly an Indian state-sponsored group Dropping Elephant has been known to target the Chinese government via spear-phishing and watering hole attacks.
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• Viceroy Tiger: This APT group has been known to use weaponized Microsoft Office documents in spear-phishing campaigns. Security researchers at Lookout recently went public with research on mobile malware attributed to the threat actors and rated as medium sophistication.

India has consolidated its cyber forces by establishing the Defence Cyber Agency (DCA), a new tri-service agency for cyber warfare. The DCA is said to have more than 1,000 experts who will be distributed into a number of formations in the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

What are the tactics, techniques, and procedures of Indian APT Groups?

APT groups use a variety of tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) including spear-phishing and custom malware. These are adaptive and disciplined threat group that hides its activity on a victim’s network, they communicate infrequently and in a way that closely resembles legitimate traffic, by using legitimate popular web service.