Sensitive defence information appears to have been stolen from the Indian embassy here by an Italian intelligence agency during the past two years, according to a media report.
If the documents released by an international hackers’ group are to be believed, the Italian cyber police — National Anti-Crime Comp-uter Centre for Critical Infrastructure Protection (CNAIPIC) — was widely hacking the Indian embassy’s correspondence with Russian defence firms, the Izvestia daily said. Anonymous Hackers for AntiSec, an international group campaigning against security agencies and governments, had on July 26 put online a set of documents allegedly hacked from the Italian cyber police server that include the letters between the Indian embassy’s air wing and a local company supplying spares for military aircraft.
Izvestia said Italian cyber police had hacked on June 22, 2010 deputy air attache D.S. Shekhavat’s correspondence with Aviaza-pchast, a company specialising in the supply of aviation spares, complaining about delays in the shipment of 15 helicopter engines.
A reply from the Aviaza-pchast representative in India written on the same day was also hacked by the CNAIPIC. The Italian cyber police had also accessed correspondence of the aircraft engine manufacturer NPO Saturn and Ilyushin Aircraft with the Indian embassy in Moscow and Air Headquarters in New Delhi.
Indian embassy counsellor (information) Nutan Kapur Mahawar had no comments to offer on the report.
The files put online reveal that besides the Indo-Russian defence cooperation, the CNAIPIC widely targeted correspondence of Russian nuclear and hydrocarbon majors like “Atoms-troieksport” and “Gazp-rom”, Izvestia reported. The Aviazapchast spokesman told the daily that there was no leakage from the company and the letters had been stolen from the Indians. Izvestia was inclined to believe this as Indian embassy cellphone bills from the local Beeline provider that were among the hacked documents accessed by it contained a printout of all telephone numbers called or SMSed by the embassy staff.