Chinese hackers target India’s power

Washington,

Amidst the tense border tension between India and China, a Chinese government-linked group of hackers targeted India’s critical power grid system through malware, a US company has claimed in its latest study, raising suspicion whether last year’s massive power outage in Mumbai was a result of the online intrusion.

Recorded Future, a Massachusetts-based company which studies the use of the internet by state actors, in its recent report details the campaign conducted by a Chinalinked threat activity group RedEcho targeting the Indian power sector.

The activity was identified through a combination of large-scale automated network traffic analytics and expert analysis. Data sources include the Recorded Future Platform, SecurityTrails, Spur, Farsight and common open-source tools and techniques, the report said.

On October 12, a grid failure in Mumbai resulted in massive power outages, stopping trains on tracks, hampering those working from home amidst the Covid-19 pandemic and hitting the stuttering economic activity hard. It took two hours for the power supply to resume for essential services.

For the fifth month in a row, the goods and services tax (GST) mop-up crossed the Rs 1-lakh crore mark in February. GST collections in the month stood at Rs

1.13 lakh crore, which is 7 per cent higher year-onyear but lower than the alltime high of nearly Rs 1.20 lakh crore recorded for January, government data showed on Monday.

"Out of the total GST for the February month, the Central GST was Rs 21,092 crore, State GST was Rs

27,273 crore, Integrated GST was Rs 55,253 crore (including Rs 24,382 crore collected on import of goods) and compensation cess was Rs 9,525 crore (including Rs 660 crore collected on import of goods)," the finance ministry statement said.

It said the government settled Rs 22,398 crore to CGST and Rs 17,534 crore to SGST from IGST.