Lok Sabha Question No. 2757 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2024-08-07
Subject: Cyber Security Incidents
Ministry: ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Asked by: Shri K Sudhakaran, Shri Sukhdeo Bhagat, Dr. C M Ramesh

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

## LOK SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 2757

TO BE ANSWERED ON: 07.8.2024

## CYBER SECURITY INCIDENTS

## 2757. SHRI K SUDHAKARAN: SHRI SUKHDEO BHAGAT: SHRI C M RAMESH:

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

- (a) whether the Government has any plan to develop cyber security software tie up with Windows Operating System and cloud services brought various services in sectors like aviation, banking, hospitals, broadcasting, etc., standstill on 19th July, 2024 global tech outage and if so, the details thereof;
- (b) whether it is  a  fact  that  nearly  500  flights  in  India  cancelled/postponed  due  to  above malfunctioning of system and resorted to with manual processes and if so, the details thereof along with other sectors impacted in the country;
- (c) whether the Government is aware of that it has  security  incident  or  cyber  attack  and Russia and China insulated from this major disruption; and
- (d) whether  the  Government  is  developing  its  own  Windows  and  Operating  System  to insulate our sectors from such malfunctioning and cyber attacks and if so, the details thereof?

## ANSWER

## MINISTER OF STATE FOR ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI JITIN PRASADA)

(a) to (d):  The global outage was observed on 19 July 2024 around 9.40 AM IST. Windows computers  in  various  organisations  showed  error  messages  and  stopped  functioning.  The stoppage of Windows systems was caused due to a software update provided on to a cyber threat  detection solution provided by a cyber security  partner  company. This issue affected organisations and users globally including in India where services of airlines, manufacturing and IT sector were impacted for few hours.

Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) coordinated with M/s Microsoft and its  cyber  security  partner  company  regarding the outage.  Microsoft's  cyber security partner identified it as a content deployment related issue and rolled back the changes. CERT-In has published an advisory on its website on 19 July 2024, providing remedial measures to fix the issue.  None  of  National  Informatics  Centre  (NIC)  and  other  Government  Systems  were impacted by the outage.

Government has supported the development of following solutions which inter-alias include:

- i. Meghdoot  Cloud suite is a comprehensive free and open-source cloud suite. It is carved from  Open  Stack  along  with  other  solutions  and  in  house  developments.  This  Cloud suite  transforms the conventional data centre into a Cloud offering Infrastructure as a Service  (IaaS),  Platform  as  a  Service  (PaaS)  and  provision  to  offer  Software  as  a Service  (SaaS)  with  ease  of  management  and  operations.  The  suite  encompasses solutions  on  a  plug  and  play  architecture  and  it  ensures  customization  to  meet  the business  needs  of  clients.  The  suite  has  unified  dashboard  for  cloud  operations  and automated deployment of the stack. It supports for multiple hypervisors and heterogeneous environments.
- ii. Bharat  Operating  System  Solutions  (BOSS)  Linux  is  developed  by  the  Centre  for Development  of  Advanced  Computing.  BOSS  has  an  enhanced  desktop  environment that includes support for various Indian language and instructional software.
- iii. C-DAC  has  evolved  a  hardened  variant  of  Mobile  Operating  System  supporting specific Commercial  off-the-shelf  software  (COTS)  devices.  This  Mobile  Operating System  provides  an  enforcement  of  custom  security  policies  at  platform  and  kernel layers.

In addition, in order to protect all users from cyber attacks and malware attacks. Government has taken the following steps:

- (i) Under  the  provisions  of  section  70B  of  the  Information  Technology  Act,  2000,  the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) is designated as the national agency for responding to cyber security incidents.
- (ii) National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCCC) implemented by the CERT-In serves as the control room to scan the cyberspace in the country and detect cyber security threats. NCCC  facilitates  coordination  among  different  agencies  by  sharing  with  them  the metadata from cyberspace for taking actions to mitigate cyber security threats.
- (iii) CERT-In provides automated cyber threat intelligence for organisations across sectors in near real time for proactive threat mitigation actions by them.
- (iv) Cyber Swachhta Kendra (CSK) is a citizen-centric service provided by CERT-In, which extends the vision of Swachh Bharat to the Cyber Space. Cyber Swachhta Kendra is the Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Centre and helps to detect malicious programs and provides free tools to remove the same, and also provides cyber security tips and best practices for citizens and organisations.
- (v) CERT-In has empanelled cyber security auditing organisations to ensure the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) systems deployed in organizations are hardened.
- (vi) Cyber security mock drills and exercises are being conducted regularly by CERT-In to enable  assessment  of  cyber  security  posture  and  preparedness  of  organisations  in Government and critical sectors to deal with cyber crisis situations.
- (vii) CERT-In co-operates, works and coordinates incident response measures with affected organisations, international CERTs, overseas organisations, service providers and Law Enforcement Agencies.

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