Less than a month ago, a major city lost power for a little more than an hour just after midnight, affecting over 200,000 people. A cybersecurity firm claims it was very similar to an incident from a year before, and that Russia is very likely behind it.
The attack occurred on December 17 of last year and was one of about 6,500 attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure and institutions in the last two months of 2016. No official blame for the massive power outage has been levied at Russia, but the security firm investigating the incident on behalf of Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s power company.
ISSP, the company doing the investigation, says the attack is connected to the 2015 power attack along with other more recent attacks targeting the government, the national railway and other institutions. ISSP said that really, the only difference between the former attack and the current one is that the attacks are more complex and better organized. ISSP also warns that the attacks could be trial runs to use as sabotage elsewhere in the world.