Chinese turning off our lights?
On the 1st of March, Maharashtra Home Minister Mr. Anil Deshmukh released a statement calming the Chinese hackers were behind the power outage caused in Mumbai last October. Later on, on the 2nd of March, Union Power RK Singh claimed the outage was caused due to human error but confirmed malware present in the northern and southern region load dispatch center. Still, the malware was not able to reach the operating systems. While statements conflict about the cause of the blackout, both agree to the compromise of the SCADA systems of the power grid. This shows a glaring weakness in the Indian power infrastructure as loss of power can cause losses running in millions and even billions of dollars to both the public and the government, and even that is without considering the loss of life and property that can happen due to power failures.
That is not all, as US cyber-security firm Recorded Future claims that a China-linked group RedEcho targeted as many as ten entities under the Indian power grid as well as two maritime ports. While the Chinese authorities deny such claims, it cannot be contested that systems and governmental institutes critical to the Indian infrastructure were compromised using cyber-attacks. This inability to stop or even detect such attacks shows a glaring weakness to the world. Our failure to protect such critical assets leaves us vulnerable to such cyber-attacks. Moreover, these attacks become increasingly sophisticated and challenging to detect the longer attackers are present in the systems. These attacks, if well-coordinated, could cause India losses ranging in millions, billions, or maybe even in trillions of dollars.
Yet India currently is incapable of stoppings such attacks while our enemies have proven more than successfully in using such attacks to harm India. While the government is slowly waking up to the new realities of cyber warfare and trying to play catch-up, it is still not enough to keep up with such attacks’ increasing advancement and sophistication. Still, there is generally a lot of apathy relating to cyber-security. There are still lots of people out there that don’t care if their systems get compromised. They think the loss of data is the only consequence, but that is certainly not the case. Moreover, more and more industries are connected to the internet, which can cause a lot of physical and financial damage capable of crippling cities.
To Know More visit us
