As geopolitical tensions on the Ladakh border between India and China continue to simmer, the conflict hardly appears to be restricted at our physical borders. In more than two months, the Indian government has banned more than 200 apps that had some kind of link to China. Government officials, through a directive from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), stated that these applications were found to collect user data and, in turn, posed a considerable threat to the sovereignty of the India. The same effect has now been revealed by an investigation by Indian Express, which found that Zhenhua Data Information Technology Co., a private Chinese company with strong ties to the Chinese government, is collecting, analyzing and mapping a huge database of information on more than 1,000 audiences. influential figures in India.
Zhenhua’s Big Data-Driven Hybrid War
According to the Express investigation, Zhenhua publicly announced “threat intelligence services” as its key offering. Simply put, Zhenhua uses cyber tools to target and identify key people in opposition to its customers. It then uses a number of tactics, including extracting information from public databases, social media, government documentation, and every other source of information it can find, to track people’s fingerprints. This, in turn, also helps you keep track of institutions and groups, something you do by establishing a ‘relational database’ among the people being surveilled.
This relational database is very important as this is what helps Zhenhua to link critical issues in India such as political alliances between individuals, behavioral traits between key personalities, opinions and the extent of influence a person has. at both regional and national levels. Zhenhua not only limits its cyber surveillance to the personalities in question, but it also regularly analyzes family members, colleagues and acquaintances.
As part of its investigation, The Indian Express has revealed that Zhenhua’s database includes detailed information trees on at least 1,350 people in the field of politics and law. Her surveillance of Indian politics includes national parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indian National Congress, and also regional ones like Trinamool Congress, Shiv Sena and more. This list apparently included 700 politicians who were directly followed and more than 400 people who are closely associated with them. There were more than 350 current and former members of Parliament, and an additional “family roster” that apparently includes more than 100 people and is said to be closely linked to key personalities as well.
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How and why is China doing this?
At the center of China’s cyber espionage activities is its attempt to infiltrate India’s political fabric, thereby gaining an advantage over its geopolitical rival. Threat intelligence, as Zhenhua provides its own service, is a well-known tactic that many law enforcement agencies employ today to apply surveillance to crime suspects and track them down. While this would prove to be productive for one nation, the same, when applied by one foreign nation to another, turns into state-sponsored cyber espionage and cyber warfare activity, a key part of hybrid warfare.
By tracking down key political and legislative personalities in India, China and its government can look for clues to track India’s strategic leanings and attempt to gain the upper hand at the border, whether in war or during negotiations. Even collecting the data from Indians en masse, similar to what the Indian government mentioned as the security flaw in banned Chinese apps, gives China the ability to apply Big Data analytics and conduct behavioral and sentimental analysis, something that can prepare them for launch. seemingly innocuous cyber attacks against Indian citizens.
At the end of the day, the key takeaway from China’s hybrid and cyber warfare activities against India is tactical advantages. What makes matters worse is that the legal recourse process for India is also unclear. Speaking to News18, NS Nappinai, leading cyber law advocate at the Supreme Court of India, says: “What is important to consider is the mode and manner of data collection. For data that is removed from social media, there is no Indian law prohibiting it, and much of this also depends on the specific terms of use of the social media platforms themselves. The real gray area persists in the collection of data from non-public information platforms ”.
Nappinai further says: “If China is implementing a bot to collect massive information about individuals from the Internet, that may be penalized under more than one provision of Indian law. When it comes to banned Chinese apps, data collection is unfortunately legal. If a specific app is hosted in another country, whose laws govern it and require it to share information with the government in specific circumstances, that is, sadly, legal. It may be that India’s analysis has shown that China will legally have the right to access the information collected, compiled and evaluated on Indian residents. “
Nappinai also claims that many nations can also use this legal entry point into available data to carry out thought-influencing and social engineering maneuvers, which is in line with the risks that the Express report highlighted about the analytics activities of Zhenhua Threat Intelligence for China. Given India’s strategic importance, China’s latest hybrid war tactic appears to be an attempt to assess the prevailing more critical Indian narratives and to attempt to influence them as well.
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