The ransomware attack on Pune’s smart city project last month that affected 25 servers and got IT firm Tech Mahindra in a soup, will not have an adverse financial impact and the affected servers are recoverable, said a top executive.
Sujit Baksi, Head, APAC Business and President, Corporate Affairs, Tech Mahindra, said in a statement to Moneycontrol, “Our team is monitoring the situation on a regular basis and has also continued the work on rebuilding the environment without touching the infected servers. The servers, which were impacted are recoverable and there are no commercial repercussions.”
However, the incident has put the spotlight on inadequate cybersecurity policy and lack of skilled manpower in the government sector. This ransomware attack is the latest in a long line of security breaches in the government sector.
What happened?
In December 2019, Tech Mahindra won the Rs 500 crore smart city project from the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC). As part of this project, the company was expected to provide smart and sustainable infrastructure, integrated command and control centre and real-time monitoring.
According to an Indian Express report, close to Rs 15 crore was spent on firewall to secure the system.
On February 26, 2021, close to 25 servers of the Pimpri-Chinchwad Smart City Project were affected because of a ransomware attack. On March 9, the company filed a FIR, putting the estimated loss due to the attack at Rs five crore.
It is still not clear what caused the breach. However, cybersecurity experts threw some light on the possible modus operandi used.
Prasad T, Chief Information Security Officer, InstaSafe, an information security firm, said that the attack could have been carried out in a couple of ways.
For one, it could be a phishing attack, the most common thread used by hackers. Employees could have opened an email containing malware to launch a ransomware attack, which in turn encrypted the files.
The other mode of attack is through an IP address that is vulnerable. Hackers could have used it to enter the system to encrypt the important files and demanded ransom.
Experts said that since the project was an ongoing one, the end point security solutions were probably bypassed, leading to the attack.
Tech Mahindra did not respond to Moneycontrol’s pointed queries on how the attack was carried out. But, Tech Mahindra’s Baksi, said, “After detailed analysis of the situation in the last 10 days, we have come to the conclusion that 25 servers are impacted, which need to be rebuilt along with implementation of a robust security system.”
“Though the FIR mentions damage of about Rs five crore, which is not for any material cost or data, the only loss would be the rework efforts,” he added.
Need of the hour
This is not the first time that a government infrastructure has been attacked. According to a report by the US-based firm Recorded Future, 10 power assets, including state-run NTPC and Power Sector Operation Corporation Ltd (POSOCO), two ports, oil and gas assets and the Indian Railways were also exposed to cyber-attacks by Chinese group Red Echo.
Experts say that intervention from the government in the form of cybersecurity policy and deployment of skilled manpower in the government offices are the need of the hour.
According to Prasad, currently India does not have a stringent policy that mandates processes that vendors need to adhere to, and security validations required for systems that are exposed to the internet.
Karmesh Gupta, co-founder & CEO, WiJungle, a cybersecurity firm that helps government agencies and companies manage their security networks, said that when it comes to government, skilled manpower is a big issue.
Gupta explained that in close to 40 percent of government organisations that the company has dealt with, cybersecurity is given as additional charge instead of assigning someone who is trained and understands the system. According to him, this needs to change.
He also added that budgets for security need to be increased, especially for critical infrastructure like banks, and power infrastructure.
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