Cyberattack May Have Caused Blackout In Ukraine

A cyberattack was the main reason for a power outage that affected Ukraine last month as the electricity grid was targeted by hackers. The attack is the first time malicious hackers were linked to a blackout, according to security researchers.

Ars Technica indicated that the malicious code used in taking down three power substations in the national grid of Ukraine was obtained by iSight Partners, a security company. The attack resulted to a blackout on December 23 and left hundreds of thousands of homes without electricity.

While attacks on energy sources are common, these attacks have never resulted to a blackout in the past. This was revealed by the cyberespionage intelligence practice head of iSight, John Hultquist. He said the attack on the power grid of Ukraine was something they were concerned about for a long time.

Security experts and lawmakers have been concerned about the possibility that vital public systems, like water and power utilities, can be crippled due to hacking. Chancellor George Osborne of the United Kingdom aired his concerns in November about the dangers posed by cyberattacks conducted by terrorist organizations like ISIS.

Cyberattack May Have Caused Blackout In Ukraine - image credit: nytimes.com

It is understandable for hackers to target power grids since they can affect a good number of individuals. However, blackouts caused by hackers were more of threats rather than reality until now. The power grids of the United States are subjected to numerous attacks every day, but most of the attacks were not considered “reportable” by providers.

The Ukrainian secret service has blamed Russia for the attack, according the energy ministry of Ukraine. An investigation on the cyberattack will be conducted by a special commission, according to Reuters. Tensions between the two countries have been high since 2014, which was aggravated by the military intervention of Russia in the region.

ESET researchers think a malware called BlackEnergy caused the outage. Russia used the Trojan in previous attacks on government targets within Ukraine. The researchers indicated through a blog post that the power outage within the Ivano-Frankivsk region was caused by the described toolset.

Since the malware extracts are still being analyzed, it is not yet possible to be definite on the source of the cyberattack. Dragons Security CEO Robert M. Lee said through a blog post that there is no conclusive evidence pointing to the use of BlackEnergy in the attack. However, if the malware was used in the cyberattack, it would increase the credibility of the report of Ukraine that the security services of Russia were behind the attack.

Posted by James Fried on Wednesday January 06 2016, 9:44 AM EDT. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under World. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0