Lok Sabha Question No. 2719 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2021-08-04
Subject: Cyber Attacks
Ministry: ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Asked by: Nishikant  Dubey

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA

## MINISTRY OF ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

## LOK SABHA

## UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 2719

TO BE ANSWERED ON: 04.08.2021

## CYBER ATTACKS

## 2719.     DR. NISHIKANT DUBEY:

Will the Minister of ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY be pleased to state:

- (a) whether the Government has taken adequate steps to counter both the cyber-attacks and cyber terrorism and if so, the details thereof;
- (a) whether the incidents  of  cyber-attacks  and  hacking  of  Indian  websites  from  hackers  of foreign countries are on the rise; and
- (b) if so, the details thereof; and
- (c) the required steps taken by the Government in this regard?

## ANSWER

## MINISTER OF STATE FOR ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI RAJEEV CHANDRASEKHAR)

- (a) and (d): Government has taken the following measures to enhance the cyber security posture and prevent cyber attacks:
- i. Indian  Computer  Emergency  Response  Team  (CERT-In)  is  mandated  to  track  and monitor cyber security incidents in India.
- ii. Government  has  formulated  a  Cyber  Crisis  Management  Plan  for  countering  cyber attacks  and  cyber  terrorism  for  implementation  by  all  Ministries/  Departments  of Central Government, State Governments and their organizations and critical sectors.
- iii. CERT-Inissues  alerts  and  advisories  regarding  latest  cyber  threats/vulnerabilities  and countermeasures to protect computers and networks on regular basis.
- iv. Government  has  issued  guidelines  for  Chief  Information  Security  Officers  (CISOs) regarding their key roles and responsibilities for securing applications / infrastructure and compliance.
- v. All the government websites and applications are audited with respect to cyber security prior to their hosting.  The auditing of the websites and applications are conducted on a regular basis after hosting also.
- vi. Government  has  empanelled  security  auditing  organisations  to  support  and  audit implementation of Information Security Best Practices.
- vii. Cyber security mock drills and exercises are conducted regularly to enable assessment of cyber security posture and preparedness of organisations in Government and critical sectors. 59 such drills have so far been conducted by CERT-In where 565 organisations from different States and sectors such as Finance, Defence, Power, Telecom, Transport, Energy, Space, IT/ITeS, etc participated.
- viii. CERT-In  conducts  regular  training  programmes  for  network  /  system  administrators and  Chief  Information  Security  Officers  (CISOs)  of  Government  and  critical  sector organisations regarding securing the IT infrastructure and mitigating cyber attacks.
- ix. Government is operating the Cyber Swachhta Kendra (Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Centre). The centre provides detection of malicious programs and free tools to remove the same.
- x. Government has set up the National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCCC) to generate necessary situational awareness of existing and potential cyber security threats. Phase-I of NCCC is operational.
- xi. CERT-In cooperates, works and coordinates incident response measures with international  CERTs,  overseas  organisations  and  service  providers  as  well  as  Law Enforcement Agencies.
- xii. National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) provides near real time threat intelligence and situational awareness based on which regular alerts and advisories are sent to Critical Information Infrastructure (CII) / Protected System (PS) entities.

(b)  and  (c):  Indian  Computer  Emergency  Response  Team  (CERT-In)  is  mandated  to  track and monitor cyber security incidents in India. CERT-In has reported that a total of 2,08,456, 3,94,499,  11,58,208  and  6,07,220  cyber  security  incidents  have  been  observed  during  the year  2018,  2019,  2020  and  2021  (upto  June)  respectively.  Out  of  this,  a  total  number  of 17,560, 24,768, 26,121 and 15,651Indian websites were hacked during the year 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 (upto June)respectively.

There have been attempts from time to time to launch cyber attacks on Indian cyber space. It has  been  observed  that  attackers  are  compromising  computer  systems  located  in  different parts of the world and use masquerading techniques and hidden servers to hide the identity of actual systems from which the attacks are being launched.

According to the logs analyzed and made available to CERT-In, the  Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the computers from where the attacks appear to be originated belong to various countries including Algeria, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Netherlands,  North  Korea,  Pakistan,  Russia,  Serbia,  Singapore,  South  Korea,  Sri  Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, USA, Vietnam etc.

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