Power Ministry says no impact on any functionalities of POSOCO due to malware attack

However, the ministry did not mention about the Mumbai outage in its statement

With the US cyber firm claiming Chinese government linked RedECho tried to criple the Indian power installations amid heightened border tensions between the two nations, the Centre on Monday said that there was no data breach due to the malware attack.

Admitting that there was an attempt to attack electricity grid system in the country, the Ministry of Power in a statement 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."

"There is no impact on any of the functionalities carried out by Power System Operation Corporation (POSOCO) due to the referred threat. No data breach/ data loss has been detected due to these incidents," said the statement.

Read: Chinese hackers target SII, Bharat Biotech, says security firm

"Prompt actions are being taken by the CISOs (chief information security officers) at all these control centres under operation by POSOCO for any incident/advisory received from various agencies like CERT-in, NCIIPC, CERT-Trans etc," the statement said.

However, China on Monday denied the reports on its alleged involvement in cyber attack on Indian power system. As a staunch defender of cyber security, China firmly opposes and cracks down on all forms of cyber attacks, Wang Wenbin, spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

"Speculation and fabrication have no role to play on the issue of cyber attacks, as it is very difficult to trace the origin of a cyber attack. It is highly irresponsible to accuse a particular party when there is no sufficient evidence around,. China is firmly opposed to such irresponsible and ill-intentioned practice," the statement added.

The CERT-in (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team) is the nodal agency to deal with cyber security threats like hacking and phishing.

The NCIIPC (National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) oversees India’ cybersecurity operations in critical sectors.

The ministry was responding to a study report conducted by Recorded Future, a Massachusetts-based company, which suggested that a Chinese government linked group targeted India's power grid system through malware, a software designed to cause damage to a computer network.

The study raised suspicion that if last year''s massive power outage in Mumbai was a result of the online intrusion.

However, the ministry did not mention the Mumbai outage in its statement.

On October 12, a grid failure in Mumbai resulted in massive power outages, stopping trains on tracks, hampering those working from home amidst the Covid-19 pandemic and hitting the economic activity hard.

It took two hours for the power supply to resume essential services, prompting Maharashtra government to launch a probe into the incident.

The incident further fuelled concerns that the country’s power infrastructure could be the next target for crippling India’s economy.