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14 TROJANS FOUND IN SERVERS
- Recentrly, Maharashtra Home Minister submitted a report prepared by the State’s cyber cell on a possible cyberattack that caused the October 12 power outage in Mumbai and parts of Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR),
- Power Minister of Maharashtra recently said the report found 14 Trojan programs that had entered the Maharashtra State Electricity Transmission Company (MahaTransco) servers.
What is a trojan virus?
- A Trojan horse or Trojan is a type of malware that is often disguised as legitimate software. Trojans can be employed by cyber-thieves and hackers trying to gain access to users’ systems.
- Users are typically tricked by some form of social engineering into loading and executing Trojans on their systems.
- Unlike computer viruses and worms, Trojans are not able to self-replicate.
Once activated, Trojans can enable cyber-criminals to spy on you, steal your sensitive data, and gain backdoor access to your system. These actions can include:
- Deleting data
- Blocking data
- Modifying data
- Copying data
- Disrupting the performance of computers or computer networks
Report:
- According to observations in the report, the firewalls of the information technology [IT] and operational technology [OT] servers, which are essential for power transmission, were affected by these Trojan horses.
- Suspicious codes and software programs that can affect the cybersecurity ecosystem at the State Load Dispatch Center [SLDC] at Kalva had found its way into the system.
- Similar Trojan programs were part of bigger cyberattacks in the past.
- Three alarms were sounded in a span of less than a minute, but were not given attention to show the possibility of a cyberattack.
- Repeated attempts were made from blacklisted and suspicious IP addresses to log in to the SLDC server, and to hack and disrupt the system.
- Credit rating agencies have certified these IP addresses as suspicious and disruptive. An attempt was made to either insert or remove around 8 GB of data from the server using the IP addresses.
- The report recommended a separation of the IT and OT infrastructure and an updation, password management, enhancement of the web application security and a strengthening of the cyber system of the SLDC.
- In addition to the probe conducted by the State cyber cell, a technical committee, which included experts from IIT-Bombay, VNIT- Nagpur, VJTI-Mumbai and senior officials from the Power Department, was formed.
SOURCE:THE ECONOMIC TIMES,THE HINDU
