Hackers have knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of homes in Ukraine, a situation that is described as a first-of-its-kind in the country.
For several years, cyber security experts have warned that such attacks were possible. This gives an insight into what hackers can actually do.
On December 23, Western Ukraine power company, Prykarpattyaoblenergo reported an outage saying the area affected included regional capital Ivano-Frankivsk.
According to one of the world’s largest online publications that delivers an international perspective on the latest news about Internet technology, business and culture,
TheNextWeb , the attack affected ‘hundreds of thousands’ of homes in Ukraine using a computer virus which disconnected electricity substations.
The report says Prykarpattyaoblenergo publicly blamed its outage on ‘interference’ in the working of its system and blamed Russia.
Senior malware researcher at Bratislava-based security company, ESET, Robert Lipovsky mentioned that a similar malware was found in the networks of at least two other utilities.
“The reported case was not an isolated incident,”he said.
Attackers used a malicious software platform known as ‘BlackEnergy’ to access utility networks, planting a related piece of malware, ‘KillDisk,’ on targeted systems, ESET, iSight and Trend Micro experts told
Reuters.
Posted by tboixy
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