Home Ministry Orders Defense Personnel To Delete All Chinese Apps Immediately!
This advisory was released as Intelligence Agencies in India found that Chinese hackers may unleash a cyber attack very soon.
In a twist of event, Home Ministry has ordered all defense personnels to delete every Chinese app from their mobile phones immediately.
This advisory was released as Intelligence Agencies in India found that Chinese hackers may unleash a cyber attack very soon.
Is Chinese Govt too involved in this?
Govt Of India To Defense: Delete Chinese Apps!
Popular apps such as TrueCaller, Weibo, WeChat, UC News, UC Browser and Baidu Maps, which are made in China, and widely used in India may have intentionally or unintentionally carried malware, which is threatening to compromise India’s national security.
Home Ministry has received some urgent inputs from Intelligence Agencies such as RAW and NTRO, and based on that, all defense personnels have been ordered to delete such Chinese apps from their mobile phones, and reset their phones to the factory settings.
The advisory from Home Ministry said,
“As per reliable inputs, a number of android/IOS apps developed by Chinese developers or having Chinese links are reportedly either spyware or other malicious ware. Use of these apps by our force personnel can be detrimental to data security having implications on the force and national security.”
Both Army and paramilitary forces have been warned that a massive cyber attack is on the way, and deleting Chinese apps will help to prevent it.
In fact, not only apps, but any form of ‘Chinese links’ found on their phone also needs to be deleted, with immediate effect. Whether such ‘links’ are official or personal, doesn’t matter now. These have to be deleted from all defense personnels mobile phones.
India Today adds:
“It isn’t immediately clear as to whether any agency has reported any case of espionage through the cyber route in recent days or even if these malware have compromised systems.”
Previous Warnings Related To Chinese Cyber Attack
In 2014, Indian Air Force had issued a warning labelled as ‘Medium Severity Rating’ against using Xiaomi mobile phones. Such ‘Medium Severity Rating’ is considered to be quite serious.
The claim was that Xiaomi phones are sending data to Chinese servers, without any authorization, and this way, they would be able to know the exact position of Indian defense forces.
Although Xiaomi had issued a clarification, but the matter was still serious.
The same year, Huawei, a major Chinese telecommunications company was accused to hacking BSNL towers to steal sensitive data. Govt. had launched an immediate investigation to find the truth.
This year, Alibaba-backed UC Browser faced a ban in India, after Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology found that the browser is sending data to Chinese servers, without any authority.
This year in January, an Army official had said that in case of cyber attack in India, China can easily take down Indian defense forces as majority of phones being used in India are Chinese. The Army Design Bureau had specifically asked defense personnels not to use Chinese handsets.
We will keep you updated as receive more inputs regarding the recent warning issued against Chinese apps.
