Cyber Threat Forecast Part 2

Uploaded on 2025-02-05 in INTELLIGENCE-Hot Spots-China, INTELLIGENCE--International, FREE TO VIEW

Cyber Threat Forecast 2025 - Part Two - India

Part 2 of a 4-part series that will forecast the international cyber threat landsape in 2025, beginning with North America, then India, Criminal / Hacktivist Activity, then Nation-State / Foreign Affairs.

South Asia – A Hotbed For Malicious Cyber Activity

For part 2 of the 2025 Cyber Threat Forecast, we turn our attention to South Asia, where the Republic of India has experienced a surge of cyber activity dating back to the early months of 2024.

The majority of cyber-attacks across the region tend to focus on regional targets. However, the strained relations throughout South Asia, as well as between India and nation-states further afield, means that the explosion of cyber activity within this region of the world will likely become a more prominent threat to Indian networks as well as Western businesses throughout 2025.

Sino-Indian Disputes Transferring To Cyberspace

Although India and China have moved most of their frontline troops further from the disputed borders in the Himalayas, strains at the regional boundaries will likely result in sporadic encounters between opposing forces with both sides attempting to mitigate the risk of the outbreak of an armed conflict.

To coincide with these hostilities, there is a realistic possibility that Chinese state actors will conduct espionage across the region to leverage India’s trade deficit and to gain the upper hand on the unresolved 2020 India-China border dispute.

India-Pakistan Tensions

Relative peace at the India-Pakistan border will likely continue following the renewal of a ceasefire along the Line of Control (LOC) in 2021. However, neither state has fully capitalised on this situation to restore bilateral ties with each government focusing on domestic issues. Further, Pakistan’s history of supporting anti-India militia, conflicting territorial claims over the regions of Jammu and Kashmir, as well as India’s historical territory incursions have maintained the risk of escalation which, if triggered, will likely impact regional business operations.

Pakistani state-sponsored cyber groups such as Mythic Leopard and Cosmic Leopard will likely demonstrate more advanced targeting capabilities throughout 2025 by attacking the Indian government, defence, and aerospace sectors, whilst leveraging a range of cross-platform malware payloads written in Python, Golang, and Rust.

Pro-Palestinian Cyber Activism

Throughout 2024 a trend developed of pro-Palestinian hacktivist groups, such as Golden Falcon, RipperSec, and the Moroccan Dragons forming international cyber alliances to launch cyber-attacks against a range of enterprises across India.

The main attack vectors leveraged within these operations were:

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks to disrupt target company websites.

Web defacement attacks to spread propaganda.

Data breaches to leak sensitive information relating to target entities.

These types of attacks will likely continue to emerge throughout 2025 with the motivation being to propagate pro-Palestinian sentiment by retaliating against the strengthening bilateral ties between India and Israel.

Examples of this include India historically being one of Israel’s biggest arms export clients and another being India’s External Affairs Minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, emphasising last year that Israel is one of India’s key national security allies. A portion of these attacks will also be launched with the objective of displaying solidarity with Kashmiris who have a history of supporting the Palestinian cause.

Based on the trend of previous attacks, the most likely targeted industries will be education, government, technology, healthcare, and finance.

Western Industry Impact

Although the majority of cyberwarfare engagements within the region of South Asia involve attacks against Indian network infrastructure, Western private companies will become increasingly impacted through supply chains based on their business footprint within India as well as relying on third-party IT management firms within the region.

To Be Continued:

Craig Watt is a Threat Intelligence Consultant at Quorum Cyber specializing in strategic and geopolitical intelligence.

Image: Ideogram

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