The Chinese Foreign Ministry has on Monday evening reacted to a report which alleged that the massive power outage in Mumbai in October last year was caused by a cyberattack" and it was an act of "sabotage".
The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson called the report "highly irresponsible" and said there was "no sufficient evidence around".
"As staunch defender of cyber security, China firmly opposes & cracks down on all forms of cyber attacks. Speculation & fabrication have no role to play on the issue of cyber attacks. Highly irresponsible to accuse a particular party with no sufficient evidence around," the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said.
Earlier, Recorded Future, a Massachusetts-based company that studies the use of the internet by state actors, in its recent report detailed the campaign conducted by a China-linked threat activity group RedEcho targetting the Indian power sector. The activity was identified through a combination of large-scale automated network traffic analytics and expert analysis.
The New York Times had on Sunday published a report based on the findings of the report by Recorded Future. It said that the discovery raises the question about whether the Mumbai power outage was meant as a message from Beijing about what might happen if India pushed its border claims too vigorously.
The power outage, which happened on October 12 last year, came months after the clash between the Indian and Chinese troops in Galwan valley in June 2020. For the uninitiated, a grid failure in Mumbai had resulted in a massive power outage, stopping trains on tracks, hampering those working from home amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and hitting the economic activity hard.
Meanwhile, Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh on Monday said that the massive power outage was an attempt at "cyber-sabotage" according to a preliminary report.
Addressing reporters, Deshmukh said Maharashtra Cyber Cell has submitted a preliminary report whose findings state that evidence suggests that the grid failure in Mumbai was likely to be cyber sabotage.
(With input from agencies)
