The Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of Assam has officially taken over, and will investigate the ransomware attack on the computer systems at Oil India Limited's headquarters at Duliajan town in Dibruagarh district of the northeastern State, confirmed Assam Police to MediaNama. "A complaint was made on April 12, that Oil India was hit by a ransomware attack and that it had slowed down their operations. The case has now been taken over by CID," Dibrugarh Superintendent of Police Shwetank Mishra told MediaNama over phone. Additionally we also reached out to OIL spokesperson Tridiv Hazarika over email, and SP of CID Assam Pranabjyoti Goswami over phone. We will update the article when we receive a response. Cybersecurity company McAfee describes ransomware as a malware that employs encryption to hold a victim's information at ransom. "A user or organization’s critical data is encrypted so that they cannot access files, databases, or applications," McAfee explained. A The Print report said that that on April 10, the ransomware affected one of the work stations of the G&R (Geology and Reservoir department) department. DSP Mishra told The Print that hackers had asked for a ransom of 196 Bitcoins — which comes up to approximately Rs 60 crore. This cyber attack is reminiscent of State sponsored cyber attacks on India’s critical infrastructure systems such as power companies in Telangana and other states. It must be pointed out that India still lacks a comprehensive cybersecurity policy as the National Cyber Security Strategy, which has been in the…
