October's power outage in Mumbai caused by Chinese cyber attack, reports NYT

The October 2020 power outage in Mumbai could have been triggered by a Chinese cyber attack, the New York Times reported, quoting a report by the American cybersecurity company Recorded Future.

The report suggests that China launched a cyber attack against India, targeting its power grid in particular, in the wake of the border clashes between their soldiers in Galwan Valley, Ladakh. The attack was intended to send a message: “if India pressed its claims too hard, the lights could go out across the country,” the newspaper reported.

The power outage on October 13 had brought India’s commercial capital to a standstill, shutting down its train network and the stock market and forcing its hospitals to fire up emergency generators to keep ventilators running.

Stuart Solomon, the CEO of Recorded Future, told the New York Times that the attack was carried out by a Chinese state-sponsored group, which the company called Red Echo. The group, he added, “has been seen to systematically utilize advanced cyberintrusion techniques to quietly gain a foothold in nearly a dozen critical nodes across Indian power generation and transmission infrastructure.”

Responding to the revelations on Monday, Maharashtra’s energy minister, Nitin Raut, said the state government had formed multiple committees to investigate the outage and a report will be released by home minister Anil Deshmukh at 6 pm.

According to the Recorded Future’s report, 10 power sector organisations and two seaports have been identified as targets in “a concerted campaign against India’s critical infrastructure” by Chinese cyber attackers.

Recorded Future had shared its findings about the cyber attack with India’s Computer Emergency Response Team, which acknowledged receipt of the information twice but did not say whether or not they found the Chinese code in the electric grid. The New York Times repeatedly inquired with the center and its officers but received no comment.