Tirunelveli: The suspected cyber attack on the control system of India's biggest upcoming nuclear power plant at Kudankulam, the Kudankulam nuclear power project (KKNPP), which was denied by KKNPP officials on October 29, was accepted by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) the following day.
Responding to media reports about the cyber attack on the Kudankulam nuclear plant, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), the public sector enterprise responsible for the design, construction and operation of civil nuclear establishments in India, agreed that it had identified a malware in its system, contrary to the official response of the KKNPP that neither its control system nor that of any other Indian civil nuclear facility, was infected by any spyware as propagated by a section of the media.
According to a statement issued in this regard on Wednesday by A K Nema, associate director of NPCIL, "Identification of malware in the NPCIL system is correct." The NPCIL official further stated that the matter was conveyed by the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) functioning under the union ministry of Electronics and Information technology on September 4, 2019.
Immediate investigation by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) specialists is said to have revealed that the infected personal computer belonged to a user who was connected in the internet network used for administrative purposes. The NPCIL statement also noted that the infected PC was isolated from the critical internal network and the networks are being continuously monitored.
"Investigation also confirmed that the plant systems are not infected," ends the NPCIL statement issued in the name of its associated director, Nema.
The NPCIL statement, however, did not mention the name of any of the civil nuclear power plants functioning under it.
This lacuna in the cyber security system of the Kudankulam nuclear power project is viewed by noted anti-nuke activist Dr S P Udayakumar, as just the tip of an iceberg, as he apprehends that a hacker could shut down the security system in a highly sensitive nuclear material storage facility, facilitating easy access to terrorists seeking enriched uranium to make bombs.
He warned that by hacking the control system of a nuclear establishment, a hacker could even seize control of the operations of the power plant and cause a Fukushima-like melt down.
