Ransomware ecosystem is evolving with wide range of attack campaigns: Centre to Lok Sabha

New Delhi [India]: Ransomware ecosystem is evolving with a wide range of attack campaigns and cyber threat actors are exploiting known vulnerabilities, compromised credentials of Remote Access services and phishing campaigns for gaining access into the infrastructure of organisations, Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) told the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

Minister of State for Home Ajay Kumar Mishra informed the House in a written reply to a member when asked whether the government is aware of underlined threats emanating from cyber criminals using the dark net, metaverse, deep fakes, ransomware and toolkit-based misinformation for campaigns in the country.

Noting that the policies of the government are aimed at ensuring an open, safe, trusted and accountable internet for its users; the MoS for Home said, “The Government is fully cognizant of various cyber security threats and has taken various steps to counter such threats.”

He said the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) compiles and publishes the statistical data on crimes in its publication “Crime in India”, and that specific data in this regard is not maintained by NCRB.

However, the Minister said, “ransomware ecosystem is evolving with a wide range of attack campaigns.”

“Cyber threat actors are exploiting known vulnerabilities, compromised credentials of Remote Access services and phishing campaigns for gaining access into the infrastructure of organisations,” Mishra further said.

As per the MoS, the Central Government has taken several cyber security measures which, inter-alia, include the establishment of the ‘Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre’ (I4C) to provide a framework and eco-system for Law Enforcement Agencies to deal with cyber crimes in a comprehensive and coordinated manner.

The National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal has been launched, as a part of the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), to enable the public to report incidents pertaining to all

types of cyber crimes, with a special focus on cyber crimes against women and children, said Mishra.

Cybercrime incidents reported on this portal, their conversion into FIRs and subsequent action thereon are handled by the state and Union Territories’ Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) concerned as per the provisions of the law, the MoS said.

The Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) platform, namely ‘Cy Train’ portal has been developed under the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), for capacity building of police officers and judicial officers through online courses on critical aspects of cybercrime
investigation, forensics and prosecution along with certification, said Mishra.

As per the MoS, more than 39,200 Police Officers from states and the UTs are registered and more than 19,550 Certificates issued through the portal.

He also said that the Government has designated Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) as the national agency for responding to cyber security incidents.

CERT-In operates an automated cyber threat exchange platform for proactively collecting, analysing and sharing tailored alerts with organisations across sectors for proactive threat mitigation actions by them.