No internet shutdown in India: Cyber Security official

A top government cybersecurity official on Friday clarified that India will not face any internet shutdown, quashing fears of an internet blackout in the country amid reports of a global outage.

Russia Today had earlier reported that internet users across the globe may experience widespread network failures due to routine maintenance of key domain servers over the next 48 hours.

Speaking to NDTV, National Cyber Security Coordinator, Gulshan Rai, said, "All arrangements are in place and there will be no internet shutdown in India as is being circulated in the media."

The Russia Today report stated that the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will carry out maintenance work during the 48 hours by changing the cryptographic key that helps protect the internet's address book or the Domain Name System (DNS).

This has been necessitated to counter the rising incidents of cyber attacks, Russia Today cited ICANN as saying.

However, ICANN later clarified that the report had a "clickbait" headline and that the impact on users would be minimal.

"Unfortunately, that story carries a headline that is a click bait. There will be minimal impact to users. Note that data analysis suggests that more than 99% of users whose resolvers are validating will be unaffected," an ICANN spokesperson told NDTV.

The spokesperson further stated that "It has been about 20 hours since the rollover and based on all information we have, everything is going smoothly. There have been only a small handful of reports of issues suspected to be caused by the rollover. In all cases, it appears the impact was minor and the issues were quickly resolved.