China refutes reports on attacks against India's power grid

New Delhi, Mar 01: China on Monday refuted reports that Chinese hackers were behind the massive power outage that wiped out India's financial capital Mumbai last year.

Releasing a statement, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, "As a staunch defender of cyber security, China firmly opposes and cracks down on all forms of cyber attacks."

"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," Wang added.

Amidst the tense border tension between India and China, a Chinese government-linked group of hackers targeted India's critical power grid system through malware, a US company has said in its latest study, raising suspicion whether last year's massive power outage in Mumbai was a result of the online intrusion.

Recorded Future, a Massachusetts-based company which studies the use of the internet by state actors, in its recent report details the campaign conducted by a China-linked threat activity group RedEcho targeting the Indian power sector.

The activity was identified through a combination of large-scale automated network traffic analytics and expert analysis.

Data sources include the Recorded Future Platform, SecurityTrails, Spur, Farsight and common open-source tools and techniques, the report said.

In New Delhi, the Ministry of Power on Monday said there is no impact on operations of Power System Operation Corporation (POSOCO) due to any malware attack and that prompt actions are taken on advisories issued against such threats.

Responding on the findings of the study, the ministry said, "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."