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Ukraine Power Outage May Be the First One Caused By Hackers (arstechnica.com)
bricko notes a report on what appears to be the first power outage known to have been caused by hackers:
Highly destructive malware that infected at least three regional power authorities in Ukraine led to a power failure that left hundreds of thousands of homes without electricity last week, researchers said. ... On Monday, researchers from security firm iSIGHT Partners said they had obtained samples of the malicious code that infected at least three regional operators. They said the malware led to "destructive events" that in turn caused the blackout. If confirmed it would be the first known instance of someone using malware to generate a power outage.
Over the past year, the group behind BlackEnergy has slowly ramped up its destructive abilities. Late last year, according to an advisory from Ukraine's Computer Emergency Response Team, the KillDisk module of BlackEnergy infected media organizations in that country and led to the permanent loss of video and other content. The KillDisk that hit the Ukrainian power companies contained similar functions but was programmed to delete a much narrower set of data, ESET reported. KillDisk had also been updated to sabotage two computer processes, including a remote management platform associated with the ELTIMA Serial to Ethernet Connectors used in industrial control systems.
Over the past year, the group behind BlackEnergy has slowly ramped up its destructive abilities. Late last year, according to an advisory from Ukraine's Computer Emergency Response Team, the KillDisk module of BlackEnergy infected media organizations in that country and led to the permanent loss of video and other content. The KillDisk that hit the Ukrainian power companies contained similar functions but was programmed to delete a much narrower set of data, ESET reported. KillDisk had also been updated to sabotage two computer processes, including a remote management platform associated with the ELTIMA Serial to Ethernet Connectors used in industrial control systems.
Couldn't it be that Ukrainian power networks are just old and crumbling, management and specialists are incompetent and the cold weather last week didn't help? But hey, it's much easier to blame it on hackers, who are "clearly" sponsored by Putin himself.
And sure enough Ukraine simply blows up power lines going to Crimea to leave 2 million people without power in the midst of winter - no hackers needed.