China had hand in Mumbai blackout, says study
India: In a report that will have monumental implications for the future of India’s cybersecurity drive, Recorded Future, the world’s largest intelligence provider for enterprise security, has hinted that a China-linked organisation known as RedEcho may have had a part to play in the October disruption to Mumbai’s electricity grid that left over 20 million of the city’s residents without power for several hours.
The report noted that RedEcho was targeting, at least, 10 distinct Indian organisations specifically operating within the power generation and transmission sectors, along with two others in the maritime sector.
Given the deeply strained tensions between Beijing and New Delhi following the brutal skirmish that took place at the Sino-Indian border in Eastern Ladakh in June, Recorded Future’s report shows, in the view of some analysts, that China may have resorted to non-conventional forms of warfare as a means of intimidation.
This, of course, is far from the first time that cyberespionage and cybercrime activity has been traced to China-linked organisations since the Galwan Valley incident. In fact, in the week that followed the border violence, Maharashtra police’s cyber wing noted that incidents of cyberattacks originating from China rose to a staggering 40,000.
What’s more, a recent report published by IBM found India to be the second-most targeted country in Asia with regard to cyberattacks. Another NITI Aayog report showed that social and phishing attacks made up 57 per cent of all cyberattacks in 2020 followed by malware, DDoS and ransomware plays. The bulk of these attacks, it confirmed, were from China.
