DRDO rejects cyber breach claims, Ministry says no evidence of hacking

New Delhi: The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has dismissed media reports claiming that it suffered a major cybersecurity breach. After detailed investigations by the concerned agencies, the Ministry of Defence has stated that the reports are false and unverifiable, according to the ministry’s statement.

The investigators discovered that there was no trace of an active cyberattack, unauthorised network intrusion or any ongoing data theft, according to the official statement issued by the Ministry of Defence. The ministry also indicated that claims spreading online have resulted in unnecessary concern, without hard evidence.

‘No evidence of an active cyberattack’, says the ministry

Most of the information being said to have been leaked is unclassified and is not confidential information, the Ministry of Defence said. Some of the files being provided as new are linked to an older data breach that occurred between 2020 and 2022, it added.

The ministry also said threat actors have been making a point of creating “documents” to look current and sensitive. These modified files were intended to instill panic and make them more valuable, according to the official statement.

Leaked documents are outdated and no longer relevant

The government has stated all documents mentioned in the purported breach have been updated over the years and are now out of date. The documents were no longer reflective of the existence of the current systems or configurations employed by DRDO, officials said.

Another finding was that several threat actors were seeking to sell the same dataset. The Ministry of Defence said, however, that the information being provided is the same from seller to seller and does not have operational relevance to the ministry. It said the fabricated claims are believed to be financial in nature, as cybercriminals try to make the data appear recent and very confidential.