News Desk
In 2025, South Asia has experienced a marked escalation in cyber‑espionage activity attributed to advanced persistent threat (APT) groups with links to China. Independent cybersecurity researchers, including Kaspersky and The Hacker News, have documented campaigns such as SideWinder and Mysterious Elephant, which targeted government ministries, defence establishments, central banks, and diplomatic missions in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and other regional states. These operations relied heavily on spear‑phishing emails and exploited software vulnerabilities to deliver custom malware, underscoring the growing sophistication and geopolitical intent behind state‑aligned cyber threats in the region.
This escalation reflects a broader transformation in China’s cyber posture across South Asia. Rather than discreet intrusions, Beijing‑aligned operations have evolved into a persistent strategic activity. Governments, critical infrastructure, and national security institutions have repeatedly faced attempts at data theft, surveillance, and system penetration. These attacks form part of a deliberate strategy in which China employs cyber tools to shape regional environments and reinforce its geopolitical ambitions. The evidence now points beyond scattered incidents to a systematic exploitation of weak digital ecosystems and fragmented security protocols across South Asia.
India, along with its neighbours, has faced some of the most visible attacks, particularly in sectors tied to national security. Reports confirm that attackers deployed malicious files followed by multistage loaders designed to install credential‑harvesting malware such as StealerBot. Victims received seemingly legitimate PDFs. These triggered forged installer packages that sideloaded malicious DLLs, enabling persistent access. Such updated methods allowed threat actors to collect keystrokes, steal login details, exfiltrate sensitive internal documents, and maintain long‑term visibility over the communications of ministries dealing with finance, defence planning, maritime coordination, and foreign affairs.
In November 2025, a disclosure by a leading AI-company also detailed how a Chinese-linked group allegedly used an AI agent to automate a global cyber-espionage campaign. The campaign reportedly targeted financial institutions, government agencies and critical infrastructure worldwide including in India highlighting the growing threat from Chinese backed-cyber attacks in the past years.
Similarly, cybersecurity researchers uncovered attempts by a China linked group to breach electricity distribution centres in northern India, including facilities near Ladakh. The attackers used the malware ShadowPad, a tool linked to Chinese state affiliated operators and attempted to map critical grid infrastructure. Around the same period, the same group probed a national emergency response agency and an Indian logistics subsidiary. These operations were certainly not random. They closely trailed periods of military tension and were directed at essential services that support state functioning.
The exposure of the Chinese cybersecurity contractor i Soon last year too offered a rare insight into the scale of these activities. Internal documents showed links between the firm and Chinese intelligence agencies. They also revealed that i Soon targeted government offices, civil aviation systems and major companies across several Asian countries, including in South Asia. The leak confirmed the use of private contractors to support foreign espionage, which allowed Beijing to create distance between the state and operations carried out in its interest.
These intrusions matter because they fit into China’s broader geopolitical approach to South Asia. Beijing’s primary objective has been to increase its influence in a region where competition with India has already been sharp. Cyber operations give China a low cost and low visibility tool to gather strategic intelligence, test vulnerabilities and exert pressure without crossing traditional thresholds of conflict. The focus on power grids, maritime systems, central banks and ministries suggests that the intention goes beyond simple espionage. Compromise of such systems can provide leverage during diplomatic disputes, allow for long term monitoring of political developments and weaken the strategic autonomy of smaller states.
The reliance on older vulnerabilities and simple phishing techniques also highlights a tactical insight. China does not need highly sophisticated tools if the region continues to maintain weak cyber hygiene and fragmented surveillance systems. The cost to attackers is low. The cost to victim states is high, especially when breaches involve confidential political communications, defence planning or financial systems linked to foreign reserves and payment networks.
The region’s current response as of now remains uneven. India has taken steps to secure critical infrastructure, but many of its neighbouring states lack the resources and institutional capacity to run continuous threat monitoring. This imbalance ends up creating shared vulnerabilities that hostile actors have exploited in the past.
South Asian states therefore need to treat cyberattacks as a strategic challenge that requires coordinated action. Common standards for critical infrastructure protection and shared rapid response channels can reduce the region’s exposure. These measures will not eliminate risk, but they can raise the cost of intrusions and narrow the space for persistent surveillance.
China’s expanding cyber footprint in South Asia is part of a larger political and security contest in the region. The recent attacks make clear that cyber operations have become a central instrument in this competition. South Asia can no longer treat them as technical incidents. They are geopolitical signals that require a coordinated regional answer grounded in long term security planning.
Rishan Sen is a researcher focused on Chinese foreign policy and its strategic footprints
