'Cyber capabilities will lead to negotiating powers'

Dec 3 2014 

PROF N BALAKRISHNAN, INDIAN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE

The emergence of cyberspace as a new warfare zone and the growing use of social media for terrorism was the centre piece of Prof N Balakrishnan's presentation.

Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science, Balakrishnan argued that in future, cyber capabilities of nations will determine their negotiating powers, with cyber capability "almost attaining the status of nuclear capability".

"Cyber capabilities of nations will become points of negotiations and deterrence like the CTBT. We would soon see an International Law regarding cyberspace," said the former Associate Director of IISc, while urging the government to tackle cyber threat within the overall gamut of national security management and not as an isolated concern.

He gave reasons for his appeal. "Social media has been used to distribute attack tool kits and viruses to target enemy state networks. The information left behind for unknown recipients in cyberspace is like the trail ants leave to guide fellow members towards sources of food. This act of distributed communication is difficult to destabilise using conventional techniques," Balakrishnan said, arguing for social media monitoring while balancing privacy concerns.

A telling reference in his exposition was to social media's increasing ability to create lone wolf terrorists who like wolves in nature don't hunt alone, but seduce "virtual packs" on radical websites.

An equally serious threat the expert cited was the use of Bots, a highly sophisticated cyber crime tool which allows hackers to control many computers at one time and turn them into zombie computers, which can then be used to spread viruses, generate spam and commit online crimes like banking and financial frauds.

"Presently the trend is to keep an army of Zombies and botnets ready to attack the enemy. One botnet with 1 million hosts can bring down any corporate and about a few million would suffice to bring any nation to a grinding halt. Most nations have developed an active defence to counter offending attackers," Balakrishnan said, posing a tough question to the Centre - have you?