Indian organisations rocked by cyberattacks in 2022

India is one of the top targets for cybercriminals looking to steal critical data which they can sell on the Dark Web. Around 12% of all unique user data found in cybercrime marketplaces belonged to Indians, according to a NordVPN report, released this month. Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro also found in a survey, published in September, that 75% of Indian firms have been hit by ransomware attacks since 2019. 

Critical infrastructure providers especially firms in the healthcare sector are seen as high-value targets by cyber criminals and state-sponsored hackers, as a result, attacks on them have also intensified. The Healthcare sector in India has faced 1.9 million cyberattacks this year until last month, according to the findings of the cybersecurity think tank CyberPeace Foundation.

Here are some of the major cyberattacks on Indian organisations in 2022: 

AIIMS’ ransomware attack

Last month, one of India’s top government-run hospitals, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi was hit by a ransomware attack that disrupted most of its online services for over two weeks. The hospital was forced to shut down its servers and switch to manual operations for inpatient, and outpatient services. 

India’s nodal cybersecurity agency Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) found in its investigation that five servers were compromised due to improper network segmentation and nearly 1.3 terabytes of data was encrypted by hackers, MoS for IT and Electronics Rajeev Chandrasekhar told Rajya Sabha on December 16. The FIR filed by Delhi Police claims that the attacks may have originated in China. The attack on AIIMS and similar large government hospitals are significant as it can compromise the personal health data of important personalities including members of parliament, and government officials including those in defense forces.  

Safdarjung hospital brief attack 

Following the cyberattack on AIIMS, officials at Safdarjung Hospital, another Delhi-based government hospital, told Hindustan Times that they had suffered a cyberattack in mid-November, however, it was not as severe. They said that the hospital servers went down for around 12 hours due to the attack. However, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) was able to revive the systems on the same day. The attack was detected on November 14 after hospital employees found that they could not log into their systems. 

Oil India cyberattack, service disruption 

In April, government-owned oil supplier Oil India Ltd reported a cyberattack on information technology (IT) systems in a facility in Duliajan in Assam. According to media reports, hackers demanded ransom worth $7.5 million in Bitcoins from the public secretary undertaking (PSU). Oil India later filed an FIR with Assam police in which it claimed that the firm’s network, server, and clients' PCs suffered an outage causing huge financial loss, even though drilling and production work remained unaffected. 

Oil India is one of the largest oil suppliers in the country and supplies crude oil and refined petroleum products through cross-country pipelines. It also produces Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG). 

Tata Power cyberattack, data theft 

In October, Tata Power, one of the biggest power suppliers in the country which serves 12 million consumers, said that its IT systems were hit by a cyberattack. The firm said at that time that it had taken measures to “retrieve and restore” the systems. Though the firm didn’t share any specific details on the impact, it assured that all critical operational systems are functioning. 

Later, a Russia-linked Hive ransomware gang claimed responsibility for the attack on Tata Power and leaked employee data it had stolen during the attack. The stolen data, published on Hive’s Dark Web leak site, included Aadhaar card numbers, phone numbers, home addresses, tax account details, and salary information.