Russia-linked hackers are infiltrating the US and other nation’s power grids: report
Just in this morning is the news that Russian hackers have infiltrated the US power grid. This has huge implications for the planning for a smart grid which depends upon data stored in “the cloud”.
Essential reading this one!
Don
*************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
From: www.vox.com
Russia-linked hackers are infiltrating the US power grid: report
Their unprecedented penetration could spell chaos.
Excerpt
Hackers linked to the Russian government have broken into energy companies supplying electricity to America”s power grid “” and potentially now have the ability to to cause major blackouts in the US.
Researchers at the American cybersecurity firm Symantec published a report on Wednesday that detailed how the group of hackers has waged a cyber espionage campaign that has broken into dozens of energy firms in the US, as well as in Turkey and Switzerland. The attacks date back to 2015, but the pace accelerated this spring.
“This is the first time we”ve seen this scale, this aggressiveness, and this level of penetration in the US, for sure,” Eric Chien, technical director of Symantec”s Security Technology & Response Division, told BuzzFeed News.
The hackers have tapped into the key operational networks of these energy companies, meaning that they could potentially control parts of the power grids that they supply. Those power grids provide electricity for millions of people.
Symantec said it believed that the hacking group was state-sponsored but didn”t specify which country it could be.
Yet we have a big clue: Symantec says that the group carrying out the attacks is Dragonfly “” a hacking group which many cybersecurity firms like CrowdStrike believe to have ties to the Russian government. Dragonfly has carried out cyberattacks on the energy sector in various countries since 2011, but its operations seem to be picking up the pace after a dormant period a few years ago.
Leave a reply →