A regional emergency was declared following a cyber-attack on America’s largest fuel pipeline last week. The attack on the colonial pipeline created a crisis in diesel, gas, and jet fuel in the States of the East Coast of the United States, as the pipeline supplies 2.5 million barrels of oil per day, supplying 45 percent to these places. It has been confirmed that the ransomware attack was carried out by a cyber-criminal gang named Darkside. Darkside is a well-known name in the world of cyber-crime, but this incident shows that attacks such as ransomware can pose a threat not only to a profession or office but also to the industrial structure of a country.

The London connection

According to London cybersecurity company Digital Shadows, Darkside acts like a business company that creates software for theft and hacking. He trains colleagues who are involved in the crime and teaches them how to carry out an attack.

Digital Shadows also says that cyber attackers took advantage of the epidemic caused by the coronavirus that has caused many engineers to operate from homes and control pipeline control systems from a distance. Even if this attack took place on the US

Cyber-attacks in India

India is also not immune to this menace in the digital world. It is not very old when Chinese hackers tried a cyber-attack on vaccine manufacturing company Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech in India. In October 2020, a large part of Mumbai’s power grid failed, and Mumbai was dark. In a report, Us-based cybersecurity company Recorded Future said that a group of Chinese government-backed hackers had targeted the power grid in Mumbai through malware. However, the Central Government had not accepted such a cyber-attack.

According to a report by IBM’s cyber-attacks, India was fighting the corona epidemic on the one hand in 2020, while it suffered the most cyber-attacks in the entire Asia-Pacific region after Japan.

Importantly, the highest number of cyber-attacks took place on banking and insurance companies. Seven percent of the total cyber-attacks in Asia in 2020 were on Indian companies. Cyber-attacks can occur in many ways, such as weblight defacing, in which a government website is hacked and its appearance changed. This shows that the following websites have been the victims of cyber-attacks.

The second way is a phishing attack in which the hackers send links via email or message, which leaks all the data on the computer or website as soon as they click. In addition, backdoor attack is also a way in which malware is sent to the computer so that all the information of the consumer can be received.

The Indian Law for cybersecurity and crime

There are two institutions in India to protect against cyber-attacks. One is CERT, known as Computer Emergency Response Team. It was established in the year 2004. The second institution is the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre, which is responsible for cybersecurity in the areas of Defense, Telecommunications, transport, banking, etc. It has been working in India since 2014. There is no separate law in India so far to deal with cyber-attacks. In such a case, action is currently taken under the IT Act, which provides for up to the block of websites. Neither the provisions are effective nor adequate. The world of computers is such that there are many proxy servers, and no government in the world can always keep an eye on the internet network spread all over the world, so defending with awareness and strategy can protect the country from these attacks.

However, Darkside said it is apolitical and not participate in geopolitics, also said don’t tie us with any government to look for our motives which means the attack is not done with political intent.

Hello There! I am Elisa Wilson, and you are welcome on this website! I work as a digital content writer for a tech startup company based in Los Angeles. I also post my work online as well, and my content varies across disparate niches. I try to use my working experience in my writing works, and I try to inform as many people as I can in a language that is not only informative but also user-convenient. You can use this link: YouTube.com/activate to check out a website dedicated to YouTube.