On 28th October 2019, Cyber-attack threat fears impacted KKNPP when a person tweeted on Twitter who claims to be former official at NTRO (National Technical Research Organization) Mr. Pukhraj Singh that Server Computer (domain controller) had been accessed at the plant in Tirunelveli District of Tamil Nadu State. His statement was in response to the account stating and pointing out potential threat on the online plant systems by an online virus or spyware named “DTRACK” which is developed by North Korean Hacking Group known as LAZARUS. The spyware (virus) extracts data such as keylogging, browser archives, IP hosts, approach processes and all files not far away afield off from a computer.
Mr. Pukhraj Singh who is a Cyber Security Expert replied that mission critical targets were impacted. KKNPP Officials denied the incident on October 29th 2019 terming as clueless. Both Power plants are running and developing power said KKNP officials to TNM (a Environmental Group in the Tamil Nadu).
1 day later on 30th October 2019 NPCIL (Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited) — the principle body running nuclear power plants in the country admitted that a “malware” was identified in one of their systems which was verified by CERT-In (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team) on 4th September 2019.
Talking with TNM, G Sundar Rajan of Poovulagin Nanbargal, an environmental action in the set aside in, cautions that it is dangerous to continue handing out nuclear power plant in densely populated areas,
Hopefully for us, the malware was detected in an administrative system and not in the governing or Control system. But even in that scenario, the system is valuably important. That is where reference upon share routines, nuclear waste, storage, personnel manning the tree-tree-plant, etc. is stored. Those who have hacked the system have likely accessed all this data, exposing our vulnerabilities. In 2017, nuclear watch dogs had warned that the Indian nuclear reactors were vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
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