Cyber Attack on Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant

The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) in Tamil Nadu - the largest operational nuclear power plant in India suffered a cyber attack. It is claimed that a version of the ‘DTrack RAT’ virus had infected the plant’s administrative systems.

The publicly owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) confirmed that malware had been found on the network of the KKNPP.

According to Kaspersky – Cybersecurity and Anti-Virus provider, the virus DTrack has been used in cyber attacks against financial bodies in India as a tool for aggressively extracting data from infected systems. The malware came to prominence in September this year after being blamed for an espionage attack on Indian ATMs.

The malware seems to be connected to the Lazarus group, that has been identified by the US Department of Justice as a North Korean-backed cyber-crime organization. Some organizations have linked the Lazarus group to the WannaCry ransomware attacks which briefly rocked the NHS and other major institutions around the world in May 2017.

Initially KKNPP denied the cyber attack. Later, the company issued another statement denying that any cyber attack on the power plant’s administrative networks could affect its control systems, as the two systems are kept separate, and that the plant’s two reactors were running with no operational or safety concerns.

A cyber expert Pukhraj Singh has claimed that there was a breach in the KKNPP computer systems and that “mission critical targets were hit”. He claims to have notified the National Cyber Security Co-ordinator Lt Gen Rajesh Pant of the alleged breach on September 4 of this year.