EDITORIALS & ARTICLES
2nd March 2021
Chinese cyber attack foiled: Power Ministry
- “State-sponsored” Chinese hacker groups targeted various Indian power centres, the Union Power Ministry said recently, but added that these groups have been thwarted after government cyber agencies warned it about their activities.
- While the government refused to confirm or deny The New York Times report, based on a U.S. cybersecurity firm’s claim that the Mumbai power outage in October 2020 was part of a coordinated cyberattack by China, it said it has suffered “no data breach”.
GOI STATEMENT:
- There is no impact on any of the functionalities carried out by the Power Sector Operations Corporation (POSOCO) due to the referred threat.
- No data breach/data loss has been detected due to these incidents.
- There was no direct mention of the Mumbai power outage on October 12, 2020, that lasted several hours.
- Prompt actions are being taken by the Chief Information Security Officers at all these control centres under operation by POSOCO for any incident/advisory received from various agencies.
CERT-in:
- U.S. company Recorded Future’s report blames Chinese group “Red Echo” for the Mumbai outage.
- Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s (MeitY’s) Cyber Emergency Response Team (India) (CERT-in)alerted about the threat from malware called “ShadowPad” in November 2020.
- NTRO’s National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) in February 2021 had alerted of the threats, weeks before the Recorded Future report was released.
- NCIIPC informed [Power Ministry] through a mail dated 12th February, 2021 about the threat by Red Echo through a malware called Shadow Pad.
- It stated that Chinese state-sponsored threat Actor group known as Red Echo is targeting Indian Power sector’s Regional Load Dispatch Centres (RLDCs) along with State Load Dispatch Centres (SLDCs).
SAFEGUARD MECHANISM:
- The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) is an office within the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of the Government of India. It is the nodal agency to deal with cyber security threats like hacking and phishing. It strengthens security-related defence of the Indian Internet domain.
- National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) is an organisation of the Government of India created under Sec 70A [1] of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (amended 2008),[2] through a gazette notification on 16 January 2014. Based in New Delhi, India, it is designated as the National Nodal Agency in respect of Critical Information Infrastructure Protection. It is a unit of the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO).
ACTION TAKEN:
- The Ministry listed actions it took as a result of the warnings that have ensured that there is no “communication and data transfers” taking place to the Internet Protocol addresses(IPs) mentioned as dangerous by NCIIPC.
- All IPs and domains listed in NCIIPC mail have been blocked in the firewall at all control centres.
- Log of firewall is being monitored for any connection attempt towards the listed IPs and domains.
- Additionally, all systems in control centres were scanned and cleaned by antivirus.
IIT-Delhi researchers develop technology to recycle e-waste
To deal with one of the fastest growing waste streams, researchers at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi have developed a zero-emission technology to manage and recycle e-waste to wealth.
USING WASTE:
- Research group in the Catalytic Reaction Engineering Laboratory at Chemical Engineering Department have adopted a methodology that uses e-waste as an “Urban Mine” for metal recovery and energy production.
- Researchers said using their method, e-waste is shredded and pyrolyzed to yield liquid and gaseous fuels, leaving behind a metal-rich solid fraction.
- On further separation using a novel technique, the leftover solid residue yields a 90-95% pure metal mixture and some carbonaceous materials.
- The carbonaceous material is further converted to aerogel for oil spillage cleaning, dye removal, carbon dioxide capture, and use in supercapacitors.
- The technology is an outcome of a Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, funded project and developed technology will cater to the need of “Smart Cities,” “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan,” and “Atmanirbhar Bharat” initiatives of the government.
RBI says banks reluctant to lend to big business
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has expressed concern over the contraction in credit offtake by large industries and infrastructure and pointed out that there’s reluctance on the part of bankers to lend to large industries.
DECELERATION:
- The central bank also raised concern over the sharp deceleration in credit growth in the home loan segment and the adverse effect it may have on sectors like steel, cement and construction.
- The recent decline in credit growth was mainly due to large industries, the central bank said in its study on ‘Sectoral deployment of bank credit’.
- Owing to the stressed assets in large industries, there was a general reluctance on the part of bankers to lend to these industries, with the problem getting compounded by the pandemic.
- Although credit growth to large industries turned negative in November 2020, the silver lining has been the robust growth of credit to medium industries.
- Credit to micro and small industries registered a moderate increase between November 2019 and November 2020.
- Credit to medium industries registered a robust growth of 19.1 per cent in January 2021 as compared to 2.8 per cent a year ago and credit to micro & small industries registered a growth of 0.9 per cent in January 2021 as compared to 0.5 per cent a year ago.
- The RBI said there are signs of a turnaround, as evidenced by a spurt in property purchases in the recent periodmainly on the back of support extended by the Government to this sector.
- As the economy gathers momentum in 2021 and beyond, housing loans are expected to pick up.
Phase 2 of Swachh Bharat Mission to focus on waste segregation at source
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), which is currently awaiting Cabinet approval for financial proposals for the second phase of Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) recently launched the sixth edition of the annual Swachh Survekshan.
SEGREGATION:
- The second phase of the SBM, announced in the Union Budget, will be responsible for sewage management in all cities that have less than 1 lakh population.
- Highly-placed government officials said that a major focus will be the segregation of waste at the source.
- We are not even letting the urban local bodies bring in segregation waste technology. It is a regressive step. We need to segregate at the home-level. It will also reduce the cost
- However, sources said the Centre will not be contributing funds for the sewage system component of this phase.
- The other mandates of the second phase of SBM will target legacy landfills, single-use plastic, and construction and demolition waste.
SWACHH SURVEKSHAN:
- As for the Swachh Survekshan, the survey assesses waste segregation, wet waste processing capacity, dry waste recycling, construction and demolition waste processing, and landfill waste.
- Over 2,000 surveyors organised by the Quality Council of India will randomly visit 4,321 cities across the country throughout March to assess them according to sanitation parameters.
- For its state rankings, the survey will weigh which cities are Open Defecation Free (ODF), ODF+ (when the toilets are maintained), ODF++ (when sewage systems operate) as well as their garbage-free rating.
- They will also be given Prerak Dauur Samman awards of divya (platinum), anupam (gold), ujjwal (silver), udit (bronze), and aarohi (copper / aspiring).
- For the first time, districts (subsuming municipal corporations, municipalities, and town areas) will also be assessed on the basis of their underlying urban local bodies.
- The Mission is working around election dates to ensure their survey does not have any violations. Mission is planning on creating uniforms “like policemen” for “safaimitras”, adding that “they played an important role in Covid-19.”
- Mysuru won the first Swachh Survekshan while Indore has won the last three, as the survey expanded from 73 cities in 2016 to 4,242 cities in 2020. The 2020 winner will be announced soon.
- The Mission is currently framing the guidelines for Swachh Survekhshan 2022, which will be more “citizen centric”and have more importance on technological solutions.
MoRTH releases Rating mechanism for National Highways
- The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has released the ratings for 18,668 km of completed 4/6 lane NH stretches covering 343 toll plazas.
- This has been done by NHAI under MoRTH, which has taken initiative to improve its accountability towards road users, who pay user fee for use of developed National Highways.
- This initiative has been taken as per vision of improving the quality of public services.
- The fundamental objective of highway rating is “Minimum time with maximum safety in stress free environment”from highway users’ perspective.
REAL-TIME MONITORING:
Each toll plaza of highway is judged based on three major criteria viz. Efficiency, Safety and and User Services.
- These criteria are further divided into a total of 39 parameters which include average speed, road condition, facility for public like VUP/ PUP/ FOB, service road, delay at toll plaza, accidents, incident response time, wayside amenities, general cleanliness, etc.
- These criteria were framed after detailed studies held in NHAI & MoRTH before its final approval by MoRTH/ GOI.
- No such criteria has been developed across the Globe in the past which evaluates the performance of highway from the users’ perspective.
- The Ministry has also begun real-time monitoring of toll plazas across the country.
- It is a simple help to improve traffic congestion problem at toll plazas/ city roads/highways by using central monitoring system along with bundle of analytics and quick decision-making outputs.
- This is eventually likely to facilitate saving the Commute Time, Improve Customer Experience, Save Fuel Wastage Cost and Reduce Carbon Footprint.
- It uses several technologies like Satellite Imagery, GIS, Remote Sensing along with a proprietary algorithm to remotely monitor the congestion status of the roads.
- The frequency sample of data can be as low as even 1-5min depending upon the requirements.
- The Ministry informed that 11,035 km of NH have been constructed during theis year, which represents a rate of 35 kms per day.
- The Ministry reiterated resaolve to achieve the rate of 40 km per day within the balance moinths of this financial year.
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