Kyiv Blames Blackout on Russian Hackers

Kyiv Blames Blackout on Russian Hackers

Ukraine’s cyber-security response team confirms deliberate attack on the power grid caused last month’s power outage. 5 January 2016

A major blackout last month in Ukraine, blamed by Kyiv on Russian hackers, may have been broader than initially reported, says a Bratislava security software company.

 

The 23 December power outage in the western Ivano-Frankivsk region affected half of the homes in the region of 1.3 million people, including its capital, Radio Free Europe reports today.

 

Ukraine’s SBU security service said last week that malware installed by “Russian security services” caused the blackout in the system served by the Prykarpattyaoblenergo utility.

 

“It was an attempt to interfere in the system, but it was discovered and prevented,” an SBU spokeswoman told Reuters on 31 December.

 

Similar malware was found in the networks of at least two other utilities, the Slovakian cyber-security firm ESET has said.

 

The company’s senior malware researcher, Robert Lipovsky, said the utilities were ESET customers, but declined to name them. “The reported case was not an isolated incident,” he said, Reuters reports today.

 

Ukraine’s Energy Ministry has set up a commission to look into the matter, according to Reuters.

 

  • Other cyber-security experts earlier said the Ukrainian incident was worrying because it marked the first time such an attack could be tied to known malware, RFE says. “It’s the major scenario we’ve all been concerned about for so long,” John Hultquist of iSIGHT told Arstechnica.com.

 

  • “This is the first time we have proof and can tie malware to a particular outage,” Trend Micro researcher Kyle Wilhoit told Reuters. “It is pretty scary.”

 

  • Ukraine’s computer emergency response team, or CERT-UA, confirmed to Forbes that the outages were caused by an attack. Team member Eugene Bryksin said it was working with Prykarpattyaoblenergo to investigate the incident but could provide no other information.

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