The unequal war on ransomware

The recently released limited series, IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack, sparked off a heated debate almost as soon as it was released.

- Gautam S Mengle

While it began with a certain section taking offence to the hijackers in the series “using Hindu codenames to purposely defame the religion”; actual survivors quickly came forward to state that these were the codenames used by the actual terrorists, and that the on-screen depiction was an accurate one.

The ‘outrage’, however, opened up a debate on another subject: the decision to release Masood Azhar in exchange for the hostages. Azhar would go on to plan several dastardly attacks against India, including the Pulwama attack of 2019.

In 2024, India faces a similar threat, one that seems to have very little prevention and no cure - the threat of ransomware attacks. And the Kandahar analogy is not without reason: Those hit by ransomware attacks are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

Earlier this year, Cloudflare, a US based cybersecurity and research agency, conducted a study into the cyber threat landscape for each country in the Asia Pacific region based on incidents reported from, but not limited to, June 2023 to June 2024. The results, which were released this week, identify ransomware attacks among the top threats faced by Indian organizations.