A cache of files related to the facility, including purported blueprints of parts and supplier details, was posted on the dark web
The operator of India’s largest nuclear power plant has denied that any nuclear safety or security-related information was exposed in a recently reported data breach at the facility.
The leaked data is related to common service facilities and not the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant itself, according to a statement by Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL), the owner and operator of the plant.
On Wednesday, Reuters reported that ransomware group World Leaks had posted a large cache of files related to the plant on the dark web.
The exposed documents included purported blueprints of parts of the plant’s facilities and supplier details, Reuters said, adding nearly 19,000 files totaling 14.3 gigabytes could have been online.
The plant, which is in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, is being built in collaboration between NPCIL and Russia’s state-owned Rosatom. When complete, it will house six pressurized water reactors. Two units with a capacity of 1,000 MW each are already operational.
“The information claimed to be available on the public domain… does not relate to any nuclear safety – or nuclear security-related systems or information,” NPCIL said, terming facilities of “conventional nature” that are typically found in thermal power plants as well as other process industries.
❗Kundankulam Data Leak: NPCIL Says No Nuclear Safety Or Security Information Exposed
India's Nuclear Power Corporation said the leaked documents were not related to the plant's core systems, adding that the incident involved data linked to an engineering contractor's… pic.twitter.com/6NO4ZjxqwQ
— RT_India (@RT_India_news) July 16, 2026
The stolen information came from Indian businessman Anil Ambani’s Reliance Group, which was awarded a contract in 2018 to build all the systems in the power plant other than the actual nuclear facility. Reliance Group told Reuters in a statement that there had been a “partial breach” of its data on a server hosted by third-party Indian data center service provider Yotta, and that the government had been informed of the incident.
Yotta claimed it had prevented suspected ransomware execution on May 29.
The data breach could pose a “serious” risk to the safety of the plant, Nickolas Roth, a senior director at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, was quoted as saying by Reuters. However, the news agency also said it could not verify the authenticity of the documents on the dark web.
The dark web is a hidden part of the internet that is unindexed by standard search engines, and can be searched only by using a specialized browser.
World Leaks usually posts stolen corporate data on its website after its victims decline to pay the ransom demanded. In June, the hacker group posted files of Tata Group, which contained confidential designs of its clients Apple and Tesla, after the Indian conglomerate ignored the hacker’s demand for $1.5 million in ransom.
Malware tied to a North Korean hacker group was found on the Kudankulam plant’s administrative network in 2019.
July 16, 2026 at 05:17PM
RT