A US report has claimed that China was involved in the Mumbai power cut on October 12. 2020. The report also claims that the power cut was linked to the Indo-China clash at Galwan Valley in which 20 Indian soldiers died for the country. Tensions were high on the LAC after clashes between Indian and Chinese troops in the Galvan Valley.
The New York Times, in a report, said that the discovery raises the question about whether the Mumbai outage was meant as a message from Beijing about what might happen if India pushed its border claims too vigorously. China-linked threat activity group RedEcho may have planted malware in key power plants in India, said the study first reported by New York Times.
In just five days in October, a team of Chinese hackers carried out 40,500 cyber attacks on India's power grid, IT companies and banking sectors. The study also said that a comprehensive Chinese cyber campaign has been launched against India's power grid.
It also said that if action was taken against them at the border, it was an attempt to show that China could shut them down by launching malware attacks on various power grids in India.
The study claims that Chinese malware infiltrated India to control power supply. It also includes high voltage transmission substations and thermal power plants. The American cybersecurity company Recorded Future, which studies the use of Internet by government agencies, said in its study that not much Chinese malware was activated. "We could not reach India's power system so we could not investigate further," the company said.
"Cyber hacking technology was secretly used by a Chinese government company called Red Eco Hackers to infiltrate several power generation and transmission lines in India. At the same time, power supply was disrupted due to a power grid failure in Mumbai," said Stuart Solomon, COO of Recorded Futures .
A major power breakdown had crippled Mumbai and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region of Thane, Raigad and Palghar on October 12. The power breakdown had hit the lifelines of Mumbai Central Railway and Western Railway with all local trains halting en route till Vasai and Diva.