19 ransomware attacks on government organisations in 2022

FBI infiltrate's ransomware group Hive's networks

Nineteen ransomware attacks were recorded against various government organisations in 2022, which is almost three times of those in the previous year, even as the country push for digitalisation.

"As per the information reported to and tracked by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), a total of nine, seven and 19 ransomware incidents pertaining to government organisations were observed during the years 2020, 2021 and 2022, respectively," minister of state for electronics and information technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said in the Rajya Sabha on February 10 in response to a query.

Overall, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) observed 198 ransomware attacks affecting Indian companies operating in the country in 2022. In 2021, the figure stood at 111.

Not just ransomware attacks, CERT-In also recorded 1.92 lakh cyber security incidents in 2022 against 48,285 in 2021, a more than three-time increase in such events, data provided by the minister showed.

The data comes a few months after the country’s premier hospital All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) was hit by a ransomware attack that rendered its centralised records inaccessible.

Hospital services such as unique health identification number generation, new registrations, laboratory reports, billing, and patient discharge were also affected.

Chandrasekhar also said that five servers of AIIMS were affected and approximately 1.3 TB of data encrypted in the attack.