A few days ago there were speculations that India’s Largest Nuclear Power Plant called the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited(NPCIL) became a victim of a cyber attack. Now, the news is out that the Indian Space Research Organization(ISRO) also became a victim of a cyber attack at the same time.
According to a report published in popular Indian news resource ‘Indian Express’, ISRO became a victim of Dtrack malware attack during the time Chandrayaan-2 Lunar launch. However, officials said that the attack did not lead to the mission failure as it was already anticipated by Indian Intelligence and all necessary steps were taken to thwart such attacks.
An ISRO official confirmed that the attack was launched by the famous hacking group dubbed Lazarus- funded by a North Korean Government. But the person who wanted to report anonymously cleared the air that the failure of the mission was not due to the malware attack and was solely due to a technical failure.
Cybersecurity Insiders has learned that ISRO received an official cyber threat alert on July 22nd this year when the Indian Computer Emergency Team(CERT-In) issued a warning about a possible cyber attack to the start of the Chandrayaan-2 Mission. However, as the Dtrack malware attack was contained in time, it did not disrupt or impact the mission launch operations of Chandrayaan 2.
On October 30th this year, NPCIL confirmed a Dtrack malware attack on its Nuclear Power Plant located at Kundankulam, Tamilnadu, India.
