Hindu Daily Digest - Editor's Pick: an electric threat

(The Editor's Pick is a new newsletter from The Hindu that provides a snapshot of the most important stories from today's edition of our newspaper, along with a note from our top editors on why we chose to give prominence to these stories.)

A report by the New York Times has indicated that Chinese state-sponsored actors may have deployed malware into Indian power grids and seaports as border tensions between India and China began escalating in May last, culminating in a deadly clash between troops of both countries at Galwan in mid-June. The alleged cyber intrusion was discovered and revealed by U.S. cyber security and intelligence firm Recorded Future. Among the report's findings is that an October 12 grid failure in Mumbai, which lasted several hours, may have been caused by the malware.

Recorded Future, a Massachusetts-based firm, found that in the lead up to the clashes, they noticed an increase in malware targeting the government, defence organisations and the public sector. The company told The Hindu that there is still some evidence of ongoing intrusion although a significant amount of it has subsided recently. The company also confirmed it had been in touch with the Indian government prior to the publication of the report in the NYT.

For its part, the Power Ministry confirmed that while attempts to breach systems were made, the power sector had not been impacted. It said “state-sponsored” Chinese hacker groups had targeted various Indian power centres, but that these groups had been thwarted after government cyber agencies warned it about their activities. The government refused to confirm or deny the NYT report and said it has suffered “no data breach” as a result of the threat. No direct mention was made of the Mumbai power cut but the Power Ministry’s statement specifically named the Chinese group “Red Echo”, which has been identified in Recorded Future’s report as responsible for the Mumbai outage, as one of the actors whose threat it was made aware of.

The threat of cyber warfare, across the world, has been real for some time now though not much is yet known about the extent to which it can be deployed. In terms of imagined outcomes, the cutting of power supply to an adversary is perhaps the most devastating. The possibility that such an attempt was made, whether successful or not, is cause for concern. That marks this story out as our top pick of the day.

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