As speculations mounted on the possible Chinese cyber attack causing power outage in Mumbai last October, the Union Ministry of Power on Monday called it out as not true.
In a latest study, a US company has hinted that a Chines government-linked group of hackers was behind in the targeted attack on India’s critical power grid system through a malware.
In a statement, the power ministry said, “An email was received from CERT-In on 19th November, 2020 on the threat of malware called Shadow Pad at some control centres of POSOCO. Accordingly, action has been taken to address these threats.”
“NCIIPC informed through mail on Feb 12 about threat by Red Echo through malware Shadow Pad that ‘Chinese state-sponsored threat actor group known as Red Echo is targeting Indian Power sector’s Regional Load Dispatch Centres along with State Load Dispatch Centres’,” the ministry added.
Recorded Future, a Massachusetts-based company detailed in its recent report the campaign conducted by a China-linked threat activity group RedEcho targeting the Indian power sector. Recorded Future studies the use of the internet by the state actors.
Mumbai had witnessed an unprecedented power outages due to grid failure on October 12. The essential supplies could only be resumed after two hours.
The ministry also said that they blocked all IP addresses and domains listed in NCIIPC mail. All systems in control centres were scanned and cleaned by antivirus, it added.
“Observations from all RLDCs and NLDC shows that there is no communication & data transfer taking place to the IPs mentioned. There is no impact on any of the functionalities carried out by POSOCO due to the referred threat. No data breach/data loss has been detected due to these incidents,” the ministry’s statement said.
Meanwhile, the New York Times has said that the latest study raises the question about whether the Mumbai blackout was a message from Beijing amid border tension with India.
India and China have recently disengaged its troops from North and South banks of the Pangong Lake in eastern Ladakh.
The Indian and Chinese armies have been locked in over nine-month-long standoff along the Line of Actual Contol (LAC) since May last year.
