Reports confirmed that a major power breakdown that occurred last month in Mumbai city might have been caused by hackers.

The power breakdown happened in mid-October and affected Mumbai’s traffic management systems and trains. It took around two hours to restore power just for the basic services and up to 12 hours to bring back power in some of the affected areas.

A cyber police unit last week found proofs indicating that the incident might have been caused by a cyber attack.

Sources confirmed that investigators found various malicious logins into the servers linked to power supply and transmission utilities. It is said that manipulation of these servers might have triggered the power breakdown. The activity was traced to several South Asian countries and investigators are trying to determine if it was part of a coordinated effort.

The paper learned from its sources that threat actors — in many cases profit-driven cybercriminals — have been targeting power utilities in India since February, including with virus, BGP hijacking, and DDoS attacksReports also confirm that the virus was discovered by investigators at a load dispatch center where the power breakdown originated.

There are several highly advanced threat organizations known to have targeted electric utilities and at least some of them have targeted India, including one that has been linked to North Korea.The most significant power breakdown caused by a cyber attack were observed in 2015 and 2016 in Ukraine and they were both linked to Russia-linked threat actors.

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