New Delhi (Sputnik) — Indian army personnel and troops posted on the China border have been given a list of proscribed smartphone applications and asked to delete such apps from their devices.
"A lot of infrastructure activity, particularly road building, is going on in crucial border areas and strategic locations post-Doklam by the border roads organization and the officers and soldiers have been told to avoid using apps which could be hacked to extract strategic information. Any communication in the area related to government and troop positions only needs to be done through secured networks," PK Mishra, Former Additional Director General of the BSF told Sputnik.
Intelligence agencies have provided a list of 42 applications that include apps such as Truecaller, WeChat, Weibo, Shareit, UC browser, Parallel Space and others, that could be exploited by Chinese hackers. The list also includes a number of applications that come by default on many popular Chinese smartphone brands in India such as Xiaomi, Oppo and One Plus.
"According to reliable inputs, a number of Android/IOS apps developed by Chinese firms or having Chinese links are reportedly either spyware or other malicious ware. Use of these apps by our personnel can be detrimental to national security. If some of them are already using any of these apps, then they should be asked to immediately uninstall the app and format their cell phones," the official instruction reads.
Though there has been no specific information on how such applications gather intelligence that is exploited by Chinese agencies and their hackers, in recent years India has taken measures to prevent a data breach and plug gaps to enhance cybersecurity at its strategic installations.
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In April 2015, a Singapore-based cyber security firm claimed to have exposed a Chinese cyber espionage network targeting Indian military, aerospace and maritime sectors with a bug named APT30.
In August, the Indian government directed mostly Chinese smartphone companies to inform it about the procedures and processes they follow to ensure the security of mobile phones sold in India, following reports of data leakage at a Chinese telecom company.
