Report says massive power outage in Mumbai may have been handiwork of China

New Delhi, Mar 01: A massive power outage in Mumbai in October may have been the handiwork of China.

The outage which stopped trains and shut down hospitals may be linked to a Chinese threat activity, the report says. The report says that a China linked threat activity group, RedEcho targeted the Indian power sector. The links to the Mumbai outage provides additional evidence suggesting the coordinated targeting of Indian Load Dispatch Centres, the report further stated.

The flow of Malware was pieced together by Recorded Future, a US based company that studies the use of internet by state actors. It found that most of the malware was never activated. Because Recorded Future could not get inside India's power systems, it could not examine the details of the code itself.

"From mid-2020, Recorded Future's midpoint collection revealed a steep rise in the use of infrastructure tracked as AXIOMATICASYMPTOTE, which encompasses ShadowPad command and control servers, to target a large swathe of India's power sector. 10 distinct Indian power sector organisations, including four of the five regional load dispatch centres responsible for the operation of the power grid through balancing electricity supply and demand, have been identified as targets in a concerted campaign against India's critical infrastructure. Other targets identified include two Indian seaports," the report said.

Further it also said that there was a clear and consistent pattern of Indian organisations being targeted in this campaign through the behavioural profiling of network traffic to adversary infrastructure.