Several publications including InfoSecurity Magazine andThe Register recently reported that the Indian Eastern Naval Command experienced a breach in their maximum security facility earlier this year, when USB drives infected with malware were introduced to their non-internet connected PCs.
The USB drives managed to access classified data pertaining to trials of the country’s first nuclear missile submarine, INS Arihant. Information was collected based on keyword searches and stored in a covert folder, which was programmed to send the contents to IP addresses traced to China once the drive was connected to the internet. Although it cannot be proven that China was the final destination for the collected data, China has been accused of similar military-led acts of cyber espionage. China’s relatively high interest in the Indian Navy’s recent involvement in overseeing operations in the South China Sea raises speculation of their possible involvement with this attack.
The severity of the breach has forced the Indian government to take notice of issues within their cyber security, and they have divulged plans to create a 24-hour National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIPC) to further address threats to their national security.
Many government organizations from various countries and other high security institutions such as nuclear power plants use OPSWAT's MetaDefender for Media (MD4M) to greatly enhance their protection against the risks associated with USB drives by protecting against malware on external media devices, as well as against data loss. MD4M allows organizations to set up a process for managing data on USB drives by creating a station where all external media devices entering or exiting the organization must be scanned. MD4M scans all files using multiple antivirus engines to ensure that malware is not present, detects file types to verify accuracy (protection against file type "spoofing"), and can also scan using a custom data loss prevention engine. Reports indicate that the number of cyber- attacks on government has increased substantially in recent years; MD4M is actively working towards improving global cyber security by protecting against the risks of threats on portable media devices.
Some of the current governments using OPSWAT’s Metascan products are listed in our solutions section.Learn more about MD4M at https://www.opswat.com/products/MetaDefender-for-media
