Dealing with cyber-attacks

India needs a carefully calibrated strategy

The revelation that Chinese hackers knocked out Mumbai’s power supply on October 23 last year should not have come as a surprise. Sino-Indian tensions had escalated, and cyber-attacks with tacit state sponsorship were a hi-tech dimension of power-projection. A cyber-security organisation, Recorded Future, released a report earlier this week claiming Mumbai’s power supply was knocked out by a Chinese hacker group, “RedEcho”, which also targeted and penetrated many other nodes on India’s national power grid and other organisations. In addition, other important Indian institutions, such as banks and ports were targeted. At least 40,300 attempts to hack into India’s infrastructure