Tuesday, October 29, 2019

India's Largest Nuclear Plant Shuts Down From Cyberattack


Cyberattack Shuts Down India's Largest Nuclear Power Plant




India’s second (and largest) nuclear power unit stopped operating on 19th October 2019. It is suspected that the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant was hit by a cyberattack and the authorities were already alerted of the threat months in advance. Even as cybersecurity experts are investigating the case, the authorities were quick to dismiss any occurrence of a spyware infiltrating their systems. The power plant project built in collaboration with Russia has been a target of foreign players since its inception.

 The atomic power plant stopped generation about 12.30 a.m. on Saturday owing to “SG level low”, the company added. The expected date of the unit’s revival is not known. The NPCIL has two 1,000 MW nuclear power plants at Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) built with Russian equipment.

More than a month before the unit stopped operating, the National Cyber Security Coordinator Office was notified of an intrusion of their systems by cyber threat intelligence analyst, Pukhraj Singh. The alert was generated on investigation by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky into spy tools dubbed DTrack.

According to a secret Intelligence Bureau document in possession of GreatGameIndia the protests were spear-headed by Ohio State University funded, SP Udaykumar, and a host of Western-funded NGOs. The larger conspiracy was unraveled when a German national provided Udaykumar a scanned map of all nuclear plant and uranium mining locations in India. The map included contact details of 50 Indian anti-nuclear activists revealing an intricate Network aimed to ‘take-down’ India’s nuclear program through NGO activism.






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