Union Power Minister R.K. Singh spoke to The Sunday Guardian on Tuesday and said that the Mumbai power outage last October was caused by a “human error” and there is no evidence to prove that it was triggered due to a cyberattack by China.
A report by a US-based cybersecurity firm claimed that Chinese-state sponsored groups had targeted the power sector in India with malware. On Monday, Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh said that according to a preliminary report, the massive blackout on 12 October last year was an attempt at “cyber-sabotage”. A report of the incident prepared on the basis of an investigation by Maharashtra’s Cyber Police Department was handed over to the state Energy Minister Nitin Raut. Excerpts:
Q: Was Mumbai’s power outage last October due to cyberattack by Chinese hackers?
A: Two of our teams went and investigated the Mumbai grid collapse. The first team was an expert on transmissions and the grid. The other team that went comprised of digital and cyber experts. The first team concluded that the grid collapsed due to human error, as in there were some incorrect decision-making and actions taken. This we will share with the Maharashtra government so that they can take up the matter at their end.
Q: Did this incident take place because of a cyberattack?
A: No, it did not. Both teams concluded the same that the grid collapse wasn’t due to a cyberattack.
Q: Has a cyberattack taken place other than this?
A: Yes. It happened on two regional dispatch centres. Not at the time of the grid collapse, it took place later. The attack happened on Mumbai’s SCADA system as well. We got to know about the cyberattack as our agencies alerted us about it; we identified where it took place, how it took place and what malware was used to do this. We cleaned our systems, which was different to the one used by the grid, took the affected computers offline and rebooted our operating systems, servers. We strengthened our firewalls and our anti-virus software. We were always alert to the situation; about two years back, we had set up a committee on this and are working on its recommendations. Last July, we had sent out an order that any system before connecting to the mainframe should be thoroughly checked. Our systems are working, we are alert, but of course there is scope for improvement and we will keep improving as there are many elements who are India’s enemies.
Q: You have been MoS Home and there are reports about attacks on vaccine centres as well. Can you enlighten us on how prepared the government is to all of this?
A: We have an entire drill and organisation that works on cyber security which is always on the alert. The Home Ministry would be best answering this situation.