Human error, not Chinese cyber attack: Union Power Minister on Mumbai 2020 blackout

Photo for representational purpose

Union Power Minister R K Singh on Tuesday said that Mumbai power outage of October 2020 was caused by "human error" and there is no evidence to prove that it was trigged due to a cyber attack by China.

Speaking to ANI, Singh said, "Two teams investigated the power outage and reported that the outage was caused by human error and not due to cyber attack. One of the teams submitted that cyber attacks did happen but they were not linked to the Mumbai grid failure."

"The cyber attacks happened on our northern and southern region load dispatch centres. However, the malware could not reach our operating system. Maharashtra Home Minister has informed that cyber-attacks happened on their Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system in Mumbai," the Minister added.

Union Power Minister added there is no evidence to say that the cyber attacks were carried out whether by China or Pakistan. "Some people say that the group behind the attacks is Chinese but we don't have evidence. China will definitely deny it," Singh said.

"We are already alert about this. Our transmission system can be shut out by a cyber attack. We had set up a committee concerning this two years ago and received recommendations from the committee. We were cautious before and will be cautious in future because this danger has not yet gone," the power minister added.

Singh's remark follows a statement put out by the union power ministry yesterday which said there was no impact on operations of Power System Operation Corporation (POSOCO) due to any malware attack.

A report by US-based cybersecurity firm claimed that Chinese-state sponsored groups, had targeted power sector in India with malware. This came months after the clash between troops of the two nations in Galwan valley in June 2020.

Yesterday, Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh had said that according to a preliminary report, the massive blackout on October 12 last year an attempt at "cyber-sabotage". A report of the incident prepared on the basis of an investigation by Maharashtra's Cyber Police Department was handed over to the state energy minister Nitin Raut.

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