When I became a victim of computer hacking

11 September, 2012

It was a nightmare to hear that emails from my ID had reached my friends and well wishers, asking them to provide me a monetary help, as 'I had been robbed in Madrid'. There are many players actively involved in stealing the government secrets and our neighbouring country China is quite infamous with hacking.

MY COMPUTER was perfectly fine and the Internet did its job meticulouly when I shut it down at midnight Saturday night last week. When I returned to my personal computer the next morning to complete an article, as part of my assignment for the International Aryan Conference, I found that the computer system had gone haywire. The opening page opened up after such a long time that I thought another millenium was about to be ushered in. The Internet played truant. That was it.

Came a long distance call of a friend who sympathised that I was robbed in Madrid and he volunteered to remit some money. I denied my presence in the panish capital. Another call of a cyber-savy friend unfolded the story that my computer had been hacked and the appeal for monetary help was backed by the sob-sob story.

Rising to the international level of hacking, we find that the state player are doing the dirty job. Their malware is so sophisticated that countering it is almot imposible. It is believed by experts in this field that the People' Republic of China is the real deadly culprit. Hackers are state players and their targets are the high profile government ministries of countries that may one day go to war with China.

India is very vulnerable. Although our specialists in the Corps of Signals are confident that the commander's orders to soldiers will be transmitted unhindered, other experts demur. USA is not safe either.

What will happen on the international scene if a full fledged war breaks out? Well, the US and China will be the main adversaries with their minor allies in toe. The danger lies in cyber war escalating and besides military etablishments, civilian outfits like hospitals and school could be dragged in. If the malware that cripples the system of Internet communication is too strong, there is no device, as of now, to top it short of a hospital or a school. The damage to non-military establihment will be colossal.

Undoubtedly the cyber war was fought on a big scale in the past too. The US had disrupted the nuclear programmes of Iran in 2010. STUXNET virus was deployed by both the US and Israel and their operation was quite successful. Syria and Serbia were also subjected to successful attacks by the US. China has been hacking computers for government secrets and also for economically paralying its adversaries. No antidote is in evidence to fight against the international hackers.