Roughly a week after the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) confirmed a malware attack on its system, it has come to light that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), too, was alerted of a possible breach by suspected malware, an English daily reported on Wednesday.
According to a report in The Indian Express, a US-based cybersecurity company had, on September 3, made the National Cyber Coordination Centre, set up under a classified project “to generate necessary situational awareness of existing and potential cybersecurity threats and enable timely information sharing,” aware of a “threat actor” breaching master “domain controllers” at the Kudankulam plant and at ISRO with a malware, later identified as a “Dtrack.” Sources said both NPCIL and ISRO were alerted on September 4.
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Authorities at Kudankulam Nuclear power plant had denied any “cyber attack”, a day before confirming the breach.
The NPCIL said that an investigation into the matter has taken place and it revealed that “the infected PC belonged to a user who was connected with the internet-connected network used for administrative purposes. This is isolated from the critical internal network.”
In a statement on its website, the organisation said that it had been informed of the breach by CERT on September 4.
The English daily, in its Wednesday report, also mentioned, quoting sources, that with the proposed lunar landing of Chandrayaan 2 due in about 100 hours and the safety of a nuclear power plant at stake, a multi-agency team had swung into action soon after the threat was received.
