A massive leak of documents on India’s new military submarines from French shipbuilder DCNS is the result of a hack, the country’s defence minister said on Wednesday.
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A high level committee constituted by the India’s Ministry of Defense is undertaking a detailed assessment of the potential impact over ongoing United States dollars 3.5 billion Scorpene submarine projects. DCNS in collaboration with Mazagon Dock Limited (MDL) is making six Scorpene submarines for the Indian Navy. “We are certain the data leak was not from our side”, an MDL official told PTI here.
The secret information consist of 1000 of pages on submarine sensors, 1000 more on communication and navigation systems and 500 pages on the torpedo launch system alone. He, however, said it is not 100 percent leak since a lot of final integration lies with India.
– Wikipedia picKUALA LUMPUR, Aug 25 ― Malaysia’s Scorpene submarines have different specifications from those used by India, the Defence Ministry said in allaying concerns over a secret data leak reportedly hitting the French submarine supplier DCNS.
The Australian reported that DCNS implied the leak may have come from India rather than France. The report says the information was suspected to have been taken in 2011 by a French former DCNS sub-contractor.
“What I understand is that there is hacking”, Mr. Parrikar said, adding that the data can not be complete as the final assembly is done by India.
India “has requested the French government to investigate this incident with urgency and share their findings”, the defense ministry also said, adding it was conducting an internal audit and taking up the matter with foreign governments to find out more about the leak. “We will work in this with very close cooperation and full transparency with Indian authorities”, Ziegler told the media here.
Australia in April awarded DCNS an AusUSD 50 billion ($ 38 billion) contract to design and build its next generation of submarines. There is now no confirmation about how the documents were exposed, whether it was a hack or an insider who leaked the information.
The Indian Navy informed today that documents posted on the website by The Australian, don’t pose any security compromise as vital parameters have been blacked out.
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It though that data has been passed through firms in Southeast Asia before finally being mailed to a company in Australia, the newspaper said.
