Sino-pak nexus targeted Indian power generation capacity

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Other decoy documents, for example, used the Cowin registration link to lure government officials to open and download documents that compromised their systems. These cyberattacks were discovered by Lumen technologies, a Monroe, Louisiana, United Statesbased company.

As per Lumen, the actors behind these attacks were/are operating from Pakistan and using a network provided by Pakistani mobile data operator CMPAK Limited, whose parent is China Mobile Limited, which is state owned.

In one such attack, the hackers sent a decoy document that resembled an invitation card for an event that was being organized by the Bombay Engineer Group, also known as the Bombay Sappers, a regiment of the Corps of Engineers of the Indian Army, which is based at Khadki in Pune. The Group completed its 200 years in service in January last year.

The fact that multiple such decoy documents were named in a way to attract military personnel suggest that apart from civilian assets like power plants, assets of the Indian military, too, were compromised by the hackers.

It is pertinent to mention that the power outage that Mumbai faced in October 2020 was linked to cyberattacks by independent researchers and media reports. However, the government had denied that the outage was a result of a cyberattack.

The Sunday Guardian had warned in July 2020 that the country’s power grid was under imminent threat of cyberattacks in the coming days.