Las Vegas Sands' network hit by destructive malware in Feb ...

I've been thinking for a while what Pakistan's best approach could be in actually making India pay a tangible cost for their reckless actions and which could impose an actual quantifiable pricetag to deter or respond firmly to any future aggression. India banks on the fact that political moves designed to provoke Pakistan cannot be responded to with military action and that situation is a win-win for India since they know we won't reciprocate by revoking Pakistani Kashmir's autonomy, giving India the upper hand on their side. So Pakistan is left in the current dilemma of either doing nothing or having a harsh military response, either of which are bad options for Pakistan. The problem is that India is emboldened to further cross the line by a weak Pakistan that can't respond. However, for Pakistan, everyone knows that India is not going to stop unless they suffer some actual damage, but using the military to do that may be both counterintuitive and falling into the trap of inviting a war which India wants. India is playing the dirty game of making moves that can't easily be countered so Pakistan must also make some moves that have an impact on India and which are difficult for them to counter. Right now Pakistan has only given hollow statements, we have not responded with any hard action against India. They must pay some price for it, they should not be allowed to get away free for something as heinous as revoking Kashmir's autonomy so something must be done whose effects India will actually feel.
It is on that note that I recently talked about the matter with an Iranian friend who offered a different perspective as someone looking at the India-Pakistan conflict from a distance. He said that Iran is the expert of engaging in proxy warfare and plausible deniability with Israel, Saudia, and the US and that some of the strategic moves Iran has taken to corner its adversaries have surprised him in how effective they were at increasing the pressure on enemies while making it almost impossible for those enemies to retaliate. Shooting down a US drone in Iranian airspace is difficult for the US to counter, seizing a tanker is difficult to counter, striking oil fields in Saudi Arabia is difficult to counter, etc. The point being that Pakistan needs some kind of action that India will feel an actual price. The problem for Pakistan is that there are no drones to shoot down, no tankers to seize, and striking targets is too provocative for any country besides Iran. However, he mentioned that there is a fourth tactic Iran utilizes that Pakistan could definitely use to engage India and that is cyberwarfare. This favors Pakistan since it will hurt India where it hurts most: their economy. Pakistan would be able to impose major physical consequences to India without using the military which is a major strategic benefit. Given that the vast majority of industries are completely unprepared for any kind of cyber attack, which is the case for many industries in the US and Europe, let alone India, cyberwarfare is likely one of the most effective ways for Pakistan to force a change in Indian policy.
It goes without saying that the first step in this process would be to start heavily fortifying Pakistan's own industries and assets to guard against the inevitable retaliatory cyber attacks that would be returned by India like Stuxnet in Iran. This cyber buildup should be done for at least a few years and Pakistan needs to ramp up and invest human capital into its cyber defenses through hackathons in universities across the country to flush out any major vulnerabilities and plug them. Pakistan should start reaching out, connecting, and learning with major cyber superpowers like Iran and China who have mastered the art of the cyberspace. Iran has managed to wipe out entire data centers and cripple Aramco with Shamoon malware. The Saudis hard drives were so disk nuked and trashed that it was easier to buy new ones than fix the old ones. Iran also wreaked total havoc and chaos on a Las Vegas casino causing $40 million USD of damage after its Israeli owner, Sheldon Adelson advocated bombing Iran. The point being that cyberwarfare doesn't just have consequences in the electronic world, those consequences have major effects in the real world that people can actually feel. This is what makes cyberwarfare one of the most effective kinds of retaliation against an adversary and it is exactly the kind of cost Pakistan needs to exact against India right now.
India's crown jewel is their economy and they will do anything to save it. The cracks in their economy are already showing signs of weakening. As it turns out, a weak economy is the only thing that has proven to be effective in turning hardcore BJP supporters against the Modi gov't. Pakistan can't effect any serious change in direction with India unless we target the heart of their strength, and that is their economy. India has relentlessly tried to blacklist Pakistan through a malicious international lobbying smear campaign to bankrupt our economy with FATF sanctions, it is time to take the gloves off and return the favor to India by waging unmitigated cyberwarfare against their economy. Target their cancerous media, their banks, cripple their government computers, their IT clusters, data centers, and manufacturing facilities. Once India feels the heat and sees that Pakistan can and will retaliate for their long unchecked aggression, we might have some hope of instilling some rational sense back into their people to vote out the current regime. Accelerating the weakening of India's economy is the best way to inflict enough damage to bring them to the bargaining table without starting a full-blown war. Pakistan has nothing to lose and India has everything to lose. We have tried avenues of peace and they have failed, but doing nothing is not an option. If India has any sense, cyberwarfare against their economy might knock them back into reality and force them to end their aggression or turn their people against the gov't and vote them out to prevent any further damage to the economy.
Building up a strong cyber force is Pakistan's best option to combat an increasingly aggressive and unchecked India. It will take a long time, a lot of effort, and major investment on the part of the gov't, industry, and universities of Pakistan coordinating and working together but it is an achievable goal. Iran and China are among the world's best cyber superpowers have successfully been able to develop strong offensive cyber capabilites. We are incredibly lucky because we are neighbors and have good relations with both countries and should take full advantage of this opportunity. The gov't needs to create CS exchange programs between Pakistan, Iran, and China to work on joint electronic defense mechanisms, Pakistan will benefit the most from the arrangement of such an initiative. We should learn from them and interface with their expertise to increase our own cyberwarfare abilities.
https://money.cnn.com/2015/08/05/technology/aramco-hack/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-11/iranian-hackers-hit-sheldon-adelsons-sands-casino-in-las-vegas
https://www.thenational.ae/world/asia/india-and-pakistan-waging-a-cyberwar-over-kashmir-intelligence-1.943333

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 80%. (I'm a bot)

A website operated by the U.S. government has been hacked by a group claiming to represent the government of Iran.The website operated by the little-known Federal Depository Library Program, fdlp.
Security experts have already warned that cyber attacks could be part of Iran's retaliation for the U.S. airstrike on Friday that killed Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani, a top official in Iran and beloved there.
Iran's state-backed hackers are already among the world's most aggressive and could inject malware that triggers major disruptions to the U.S. public and private sector.
A top U.S. cybersecurity official is warning businesses and government agencies to be extra vigilant.
In 2012 and 2013, in response to U.S. sanctions, Iranian state-backed hackers carried out a series of disruptive denial-of-service attacks that knocked offline the websites of major U.S. banks including Bank of America as well as the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ.Two years later, they wiped servers at the Sands Casino in Las Vegas, crippling hotel and gambling operations.
Wysopal said the Iranians are apt to have learned a lot from the 2017 NotPetya attack, which the U.S. and Britain have attributed to state-backed Russian hackers and which caused at least $10 billion in damage globally.

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