Recently, It was revealed that a malware named DTrack attacked Indian Nuclear Power Plant, but in fresh reports from The Quint, it is revealed that ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) was attacked too at the time of Chandrayaan-2 Mission.
The North Korean Hackers group Lazarus tried hacking into prestigious ISRO servers. They sent phishing emails containing malware to several scientists of the organization.
ISRO officials told in a statement that they were alerted by CERT-In (Computer Emergency Response Team, India) during the period of Chandrayaan-2 mission between July 22 to September 7. They further insisted that their system remain “unaffected”.
While Security researchers are insisting that without any cyber breach, CERT-In won’t alert the organization. Previously, CERT-In alerts the nuclear power plant regarding the attack and system intrusion.
Founder of a Mumbai-based cybersecurity firm, Security Bridge, Yash Kadakia told that it is confirmed that ISRO scientists received the phishing emails and have clicked on the links due to lack of monitoring but the real breach is not yet disclosed.
We do have the email address of the targeted ISRO scientist but have not publicly disclosed that information yet. We have shared it with National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) so that they can look into it and investigate.
Mr. Kadakia, Founder, Security Bridge
ISRO also informed the space station about the alert and commented that the internal system is free from any breach. In other reports it is also mentioned that the malware has not affected the Chndrayaan-2 mission, the sole reason is only technical failure.
As far as ISRO is concerned, we got an alert, checked our systems and are unaffected. I will not go into details
ISRO Officials
ISRO response is creating a hustle as the Nuclear Power Plant is still under forensic investigation after the breach and it is a time-consuming process as tera-bytes of data is shifted, how ISRO has checked the system so fast?
