MUMBAI: The power outage in Mumbai on October 12 could be a cyber sabotage, said Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh. He said that this was one of the findings of the expert inquiry committee which was constituted to inquire into the incident.
"The preliminary report has been submitted by the committee and they have suggested that power outage in Mumbai could be a case of cyber sabotage," said Deshmukh.
He said that the committee which analysed the transmission system of the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB) said that there could have been attempts by blacklisted IP addresses to log into the system.
"Also, nearly 8GB data could have been transferred into the system and attempts to install malware into the system could have also been done," said Deshmukh.
"This is the preliminary report and once the energy department studies it, we will give further directions," said Deshmukh.
This comes after a new report by a US company referring to unknown Chinese entities in mounting a cyberattack on Indian electricity infrastructure, leading to a large scale power failure in Mumbai. The US report has also been carried in several international publications. The New York Times was the first to write about this report.
On October 12, large parts of Mumbai and parts of the neighbouring Thane district were hit by a power outage. There were multiple tripping of transformers and line and about 360 MW power supply to the Mumbai area was cut off initially.