A  new study lends weight to the idea that those two events may well have been connected — as part of a broad Chinese cyber campaign against India’s power grid, timed to send a message that if India pressed its claims too hard, the lights could go out across the country. ( Business standard). 

The study shows that as the standoff continued in the Himalayas, taking at least two dozen lives, Chinese malware was flowing into the control systems that manage electric supply across India, along with a high-voltage transmission substation and a coal-fired power plant.

The flow of malware was pieced together by Recorded Future, a Somerville, Mass., company that studies the use of the internet by state actors. It found that most of the malware was never activated. And because Recorded Future could not get inside India’s power systems, it could not examine the details of the code itself, which was placed in strategic power-distribution systems across the country. While it has notified Indian authorities, so far they are not reporting what they have found.

Stuart Solomon, Recorded Future’s chief operating officer, said that the Chinese state-sponsored group, which the firm named Red Echo, “has been seen to systematically utilize advanced cyberintrusion techniques to quietly gain a foothold in nearly a dozen critical nodes across the Indian power generation and transmission infrastructure.”

Readers would recall that we have been pressing hard on this subject for long and have written many posts on the same. Critical infrastructure of which electricity is also one vertical of India is too vulnerable for any one to be satisfied. The reason is w e have chinese and US and other telecom components hardware as well as well as software in the pipeline. IN fact the country has been so shamelessly dependent on foreign technology that up till a few years back indifenous technology was not even invited for the tender process and were kept out by deliberately selecting certain technical and other terms and conditions. 

All though Modi govt has TRIED to correct this but the anomaly is still there in big way to take a breath. Recently there was an army tender for certain automobile component which allowed only one chinese company to satisfy the terms and conditions. IN fact we have raised the issue few months back but are not sure of the outcome. 

WE think that the govt has to be strict for promoting indigenous technology. The nationalist technologists are deliberately kept out and are made to suffer. 

The next few weeks from 10th march to 30 march are again ominous and point to some more BIG sabotage activity to take place. The govt has to be careful against foreign conspiracies that may again try to destabilize the nation. 

WE request the Modi govt to tread carefully and take all precautions with respect to country’s safety and security. The govt has done tremendously well but still there is something missing that need to be rectified . We will write more on it in days to come.

Dr Asheesh Shah