BANGKOK: India’s power sector has been targeted by hackers in a long-term operation thought to have been carried out by a state-sponsored Chinese group, a US-based private cybersecurity company detailed in a new report.
Over the last several months, the Insikt Group, the threat research division of Massachusetts-based Recorded Future, said it has collected evidence that hackers targeted seven Indian state centers responsible for carrying out electrical dispatch and grid control near a border area disputed by the two nuclear neighbors.
The group primarily used the Trojan ShadowPad, which is believed to have been developed by contractors for China’s Ministry of State Security, leading to the conclusion that this was a state-sponsored hacking effort, the group reported.
“ShadowPad continues to be employed by an ever–increasing number of People’s Liberation Army and Ministry of State Security-linked groups, with its origins linked to known MSS contractors first using the tool in their own operations and later likely acting as a digital quartermaster,” Recorded Future said in the report late Wednesday.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Thursday the report had been “noted” by Beijing, but that China “firmly opposes and combats any form of cyberattacks, and will not encourage, support or condone any cyberattacks.”
“I would like to advise the company concerned that if they really care about global cybersecurity, they should pay more attention to the cyberattacks by the US government hackers on China and other countries, and do more to help promote dialogue and cooperation among countries, instead of using the cyberattack issue to stir up trouble and throw mud at China,” he told reporters.
Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said India hasn’t discussed the issue with China.
“We have seen reports. There is a mechanism to safeguard our critical infrastructure to keep it resilient. We haven’t raised this issue with China,” he said.
Indian Minister of Power R.K. Singh said the report was not a cause for concern.
“We are always prepared,” he said. “We have a very robust security system. We are always alert.”
Insikt Group already detected and reported a suspected Chinese-sponsored hack of 10 Indian power sector organizations in February 2021 by a group known as RedEcho. The more recent hack “displays targeting and capability consistencies” with RedEcho, but there are also “notable distinctions” between the two so the group has been given the working name of Threat Activity Group 38, or TAG-38, as more information is gathered.
Following a short lull after its first report, Recorded Future said the Insikt Group again started tracking hacking attempts on India’s power grid organizations. Over the last several months, through late March, it identified likely network intrusions targeting at least seven of India’s so-called “State Load Dispatch Centers” — all in proximity to the disputed border in Ladakh, where Chinese and Indian troops clashed in June 2020, leaving 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese dead.
“Recorded Future continues to track Chinese state-sponsored activity groups targeting a wide variety of sectors globally — a large majority of this conforms to longstanding cyber espionage efforts, such as targeting of foreign governments, surveillance of dissident and minority groups, and economic espionage,” the report said.
“However, the coordinated effort to target Indian power grid assets in recent years is notably distinct from our perspective and, given the continued heightened tension and border disputes between the two countries, we believe is a cause for concern,” it added.
Hackers are thought to have gained access through third-party devices connected to the Internet, like IP cameras, which had been compromised, the company said.
Investigators have not yet determined how they had been compromised, but Recorded Future suggested they may have originally been installed using default credentials, leaving them vulnerable.
Because the prolonged targeting of India’s power grid “offers limited economic espionage or traditional intelligence-gathering opportunities,” Recorded Future said it seems more likely the goal is to enable information gathering around surrounding critical infrastructure systems, or to be pre-positioned for future activity.
“The objective for intrusions may include gaining an increased understanding into these complex systems in order to facilitate capability development for future use or gaining sufficient access across the system in preparation for future contingency operations,” Recorded Future said.
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Chinese hackers reportedly target India’s power grid
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Chinese hackers reportedly target India’s power grid
- China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Thursday the report had been “noted” by Beijing
- Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said India hasn’t discussed the issue with China
Trump’s new tariffs shift focus to balance of payments; economists see no crisis
President Donald Trump’s temporary 15 percent tariffs to replace those struck down by the US Supreme Court are meant to resolve a problem that many economists say does not exist: a US balance of payments crisis, making them potentially vulnerable to new legal challenges.
Hours after the high court on Friday struck down a huge swath of tariffs Trump had imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the president announced the new duties under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 — a never-used statute that even his own legal team dismissed as irrelevant months ago.
Collections of the new 15 percent tariffs began at midnight on Tuesday as IEEPA tariff collections of 10 percent to 50 percent halted.
The Section 122 law allows the president to impose duties of up to 15 percent for up to 150 days on any and all countries to address “large and serious” balance-of-payments deficits and “fundamental international payments problems.”
Trump’s tariff order argued that a serious balance of payments deficit existed in the form of a $1.2 trillion annual US goods trade deficit and a current account deficit of 4 percent of GDP and a reversal of the US primary income surplus.
Some economists, including former International Monetary Fund First Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath, disagreed with the Trump administration’s alarm.
“We can all agree that the US is not facing a balance of payment crisis, which is when countries experience an exorbitant increase in international borrowing costs and lose access to financial markets,” Gopinath told Reuters.
Gopinath rejected the White House’s claim that a negative balance on the US primary income for the first time since 1960 was evidence of a large and serious balance of payment problem.
She attributed the negative balance to a large increase in foreign purchases of US equities and risky assets over the past decade, which outperformed foreign equities over this period.
Mark Sobel, a former US Treasury and IMF official, said that balance of payments crises are more associated with countries that have fixed exchange rates, and noted that the floating-rate dollar has been steady, the 10-year Treasury yield fairly stable, with US stocks performing well.
Josh Lipsky, chair of international economics at the Atlantic Council think tank, agreed, noting that a balance of payments crisis occurred when a country could not pay for what it was importing or was unable to service foreign debt. That was fundamentally different from a trade deficit, he added.
Brad Setser, a currency and trade expert at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as a senior adviser to the US Trade Representative in the Biden administration, took a somewhat contrarian view, arguing in lengthy X posts on Sunday that the Trump administration may have a reasonable case that there is a “large and serious” balance of payments deficit.
He noted that the current account deficit was far higher than when then-president Richard Nixon erected tariffs in 1971 to address a balance of payments crisis, and the US net international investment position is much worse. This “gives the administration a real argument,” in favor of its tariffs, Setser wrote.
The White House, US Treasury and US Trade Representative did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the use of Section 122.
WRONG STATUTE FOR THE JOB
Despite the Trump administration’s new focus on balance of payments, the Justice Department had previously argued that Section 122 was the wrong statute to handle a national emergency over the trade deficit.
In court filings in its defense of IEEPA tariffs, the Justice Department said Section 122 would not have “any obvious application here, where the concerns the president identified in declaring an emergency arise from trade deficits, which are conceptually distinct from balance-of-payments deficits.”
Neal Katyal, who argued at the Supreme Court on behalf of plaintiffs challenging the IEEPA tariffs, told CNBC that the Trump administration’s stance against the use of Section 122 for a trade deficit will make those tariffs vulnerable to litigation.
“I’m not sure it will necessarily even need to get to the Supreme Court, but if the president adheres to this plan of using a statute that his own Justice Department has said he can’t use, yeah, I think that’s a pretty easy thing to litigate,” Katyal said.
It is unclear who might take the lead in challenging the Section 122 tariffs.
Sara Albrecht, chair of the Liberty Justice Center, a nonprofit, public-interest law firm representing several small businesses that challenged the IEEPA tariffs, said the group would closely monitor any new statutes being invoked.
Albrecht did not reveal any future litigation strategy, adding: “Our immediate focus is simple: making sure the refund process begins and that checks start flowing to the American businesses that paid those unconstitutional duties.”
In its ruling, the Supreme Court did not give instructions regarding refunds, instead remanding the case to a lower trade court to determine next steps.
Hours after the high court on Friday struck down a huge swath of tariffs Trump had imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the president announced the new duties under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 — a never-used statute that even his own legal team dismissed as irrelevant months ago.
Collections of the new 15 percent tariffs began at midnight on Tuesday as IEEPA tariff collections of 10 percent to 50 percent halted.
The Section 122 law allows the president to impose duties of up to 15 percent for up to 150 days on any and all countries to address “large and serious” balance-of-payments deficits and “fundamental international payments problems.”
Trump’s tariff order argued that a serious balance of payments deficit existed in the form of a $1.2 trillion annual US goods trade deficit and a current account deficit of 4 percent of GDP and a reversal of the US primary income surplus.
Some economists, including former International Monetary Fund First Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath, disagreed with the Trump administration’s alarm.
“We can all agree that the US is not facing a balance of payment crisis, which is when countries experience an exorbitant increase in international borrowing costs and lose access to financial markets,” Gopinath told Reuters.
Gopinath rejected the White House’s claim that a negative balance on the US primary income for the first time since 1960 was evidence of a large and serious balance of payment problem.
She attributed the negative balance to a large increase in foreign purchases of US equities and risky assets over the past decade, which outperformed foreign equities over this period.
Mark Sobel, a former US Treasury and IMF official, said that balance of payments crises are more associated with countries that have fixed exchange rates, and noted that the floating-rate dollar has been steady, the 10-year Treasury yield fairly stable, with US stocks performing well.
Josh Lipsky, chair of international economics at the Atlantic Council think tank, agreed, noting that a balance of payments crisis occurred when a country could not pay for what it was importing or was unable to service foreign debt. That was fundamentally different from a trade deficit, he added.
Brad Setser, a currency and trade expert at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as a senior adviser to the US Trade Representative in the Biden administration, took a somewhat contrarian view, arguing in lengthy X posts on Sunday that the Trump administration may have a reasonable case that there is a “large and serious” balance of payments deficit.
He noted that the current account deficit was far higher than when then-president Richard Nixon erected tariffs in 1971 to address a balance of payments crisis, and the US net international investment position is much worse. This “gives the administration a real argument,” in favor of its tariffs, Setser wrote.
The White House, US Treasury and US Trade Representative did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the use of Section 122.
WRONG STATUTE FOR THE JOB
Despite the Trump administration’s new focus on balance of payments, the Justice Department had previously argued that Section 122 was the wrong statute to handle a national emergency over the trade deficit.
In court filings in its defense of IEEPA tariffs, the Justice Department said Section 122 would not have “any obvious application here, where the concerns the president identified in declaring an emergency arise from trade deficits, which are conceptually distinct from balance-of-payments deficits.”
Neal Katyal, who argued at the Supreme Court on behalf of plaintiffs challenging the IEEPA tariffs, told CNBC that the Trump administration’s stance against the use of Section 122 for a trade deficit will make those tariffs vulnerable to litigation.
“I’m not sure it will necessarily even need to get to the Supreme Court, but if the president adheres to this plan of using a statute that his own Justice Department has said he can’t use, yeah, I think that’s a pretty easy thing to litigate,” Katyal said.
It is unclear who might take the lead in challenging the Section 122 tariffs.
Sara Albrecht, chair of the Liberty Justice Center, a nonprofit, public-interest law firm representing several small businesses that challenged the IEEPA tariffs, said the group would closely monitor any new statutes being invoked.
Albrecht did not reveal any future litigation strategy, adding: “Our immediate focus is simple: making sure the refund process begins and that checks start flowing to the American businesses that paid those unconstitutional duties.”
In its ruling, the Supreme Court did not give instructions regarding refunds, instead remanding the case to a lower trade court to determine next steps.
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