Chinese hackers may have leaked out India's defence secrets: Report

India's major missile and armament systems and diplomatic and security documents may have been compromised as Chinese hackers reportedly sneaked into top-secret cyber files of the Union defence ministry and missions around the world, a study said today.

Among the systems hacked into could be Project Shakti, a recently inducted advanced artillery combat and control system of the army.

India's new mobile missile defence system called Iron Dome may also have been compromised, the report titled Shadow In The Clouds and compiled by Canadian and American researchers in the University of Toronto said.

The hacking was reportedly carried out under an espionage ring called Shadow Network based in China. The hackers tapped into top-secret files of the Indian government.

During investigations conducted over eight months by researchers from Toronto's Munk School of Cyber Affairs and Ottawa's The SecDev Group, the report said 1,500 letters sent from the Dalai Lama's office between January and November 2009 were also leaked.

The report said systematic cyber espionage had been carried out from servers in China, which "compromised" government, business, academic, and other computer network systems in India.

Reacting to the development, defence ministry spokesperson Sitanshu Kar said in New Delhi that since the research paper had come out only today, the government would need time to study it and get to the bottom of it.

But senior defence ministry officials said they had taken a serious view of the study and a probe may be ordered to check and fix the leaks.

In Beijing, China dismissed the report and said it was firmly opposed to hacking and regards it as an international crime.

"We have been hearing frequently these kind of news and I do not know the purpose to stir up issues," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said.

The report's findings stated that entities related to the Indian government, both in India and outside, had been compromised.

These included computers at Indian embassies in Belgium, Serbia, Germany, Italy, Kuwait, the United States, and Zimbabwe, and the high commissions of India in Cyprus and the United Kingdom.

"These include documents from the offices of the Dalai Lama and agencies of the Indian national security establishment," the report said.

"Data containing sensitive information on citizens of numerous third countries, as well as personal, financial, and business information, were exfiltrated and recovered during the course of the investigation," it said.

Among the exfiltrated data was one document that appeared to be encrypted diplomatic correspondence, two documents marked SECRET, six RESTRICTED, and five CONFIDENTIAL. "These documents are identified as belonging to the Indian government," the report said.

In addition, the stolen documents had confidential information taken from Indian embassies about India's international relations with and assessments of activities in West Africa, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, and West Asia, as well as visa applications, passport office circulars, and diplomatic correspondence.

Some documents contained sensitive information taken from a member of the National Security Council secretariat concerning secret assessments of India's security situation in the states of Assam, Manipur, Nagaland, and Tripura, as well as information about the Naxalites and Maoists.

Among the Indian military academic institutions and journals' websites hacked into were those of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), a naval think tank called the National Maritime Foundation, and defence magazines India Strategic and Force.

Some private-sector firms, which recently entered into the defence production market, such as the Tatas and construction company DLF Limited, too, were victims of the Chinese hackers, the report said.

Recovered documents included presentations relating to the following projects: Pechora missile system, an anti-aircraft surface-to-air missile system; Iron Dome missile system, a mobile missile defence system (Ratzlav-Katz 2010); Project Shakti, an artillery combat command and control system (Frontier India 2009).

That apart, the cyber spies also hacked into computers of the military engineering services, a defence services construction organisation, the 21 Mountain Artillery Brigade stationed in Assam, the air force station at Delhi's Race Course Road opposite prime minister Manmohan Singh's residence, and another IAF station in Gujarat.

However, the researchers noted that there was no direct evidence that these documents were stolen from Indian government computers and may have been compromised as a result of being copied onto personal computers.

The report also found that the spies hacked into information on visa applications submitted to Indian diplomatic missions in Afghanistan.

This data was voluntarily provided to the Indian missions by nationals of 13 countries as part of the regular visa application process.

"In a context like Afghanistan, this finding points to the complex nature of the information security challenge where risks to individuals [or operational security] can occur as a result of a data compromise on secure systems operated by trusted partners," the report said.