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Hyderabad: A ransomware group has posted online a large cache of files linked to the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, India’s largest atomic energy facility, which it claimed had been obtained from Anil Ambani’s Reliance Group, Reuters reported.

The Tamil Nadu-based plant is central to Prime Minister Narendra Modi‘s plans to expand the country’s nuclear power capacity. Reliance Group, one of the plant’s contractors, confirmed to Reuters that there had been a “partial breach” of its data on a server hosted by third-party provider Yotta, and said the government had been informed. 

It did not specify what data was compromised.

Files date back to 2016

According to Reuters, nearly 19,000 files totalling 14.3 gigabytes and matching the plant’s internal acronym “KKNP” have been publicly accessible on the dark web since June 11. Reuters said it reviewed the documents, dated between 2016 and mid-2025, but could not verify their authenticity. 

They purportedly include facility blueprints, supplier lists, inspection records and insurance documents, and formed the most sensitive portion of a much larger 858,000-file trove from Reliance on the leak site.

The files reportedly do not touch the reactors’ core systems, supplied by Russia‘s Rosatom, but include blueprints for ventilation and cooling systems and the layout of a common control room tied to Units 3 and 4, which Reliance Infrastructure has been building since 2018 and which are due online by 2027. 

One document reportedly shows a USD 112 million insurance policy covering the two units against acts of terrorism.

A security risk

The Nuclear Power Corporation of India said, in a statement after the report was published, that the material in the public domain related only to common service facilities and not to nuclear safety or security systems. 

Yotta said it had detected suspicious activity on the relevant server on May 29 and blocked an attempted ransomware execution, though Reliance Infrastructure later flagged claims of a breach by external actors. India’s cybersecurity agency CERT-In is examining the matter, Reuters reported, citing a source familiar with the issue.

It is the second cybersecurity scare at Kudankulam, after malware linked to a North Korean hacker group was found on the plant’s administrative network in 2019. India ranked third globally for data breaches last year, according to cybersecurity firm Surfshark.