Security News > 2020 > January > More Threat Groups Target Electric Utilities in North America
An increasing number of threat groups have been spotted targeting electric utilities in North America, industrial cybersecurity firm Dragos reported on Thursday.
"As adversaries and their sponsors invest more effort and money into obtaining effects-focused capabilities, the risk of a disruptive or destructive attack on the electric sector significantly increases," the firm said in its report, titled North American Electric Cyber Threat Perspective.
Dragos currently tracks a total of 11 threat groups that have been known to target industrial control systems, and seven of them have attacked electric utilities in North America.
It tracks these groups as PARISITE, XENOTIME, MAGNALLIUM, DYMALLOY, RASPITE, ALLANITE and COVELLITE. The company last year reported that XENOTIME, the threat actor behind the 2017 Triton/Trisis malware attack on a Saudi Arabian petrochemical plant, had started targeting electric utilities in the United States and the APAC region.
"Although North America has not experienced a disruptive cyberattack to electric system operations and reliability, ICS-targeting adversaries previously demonstrated the capability to disrupt electricity in Europe. With additional resources and retooling, such disruptive methods could potentially be applicable to the North American electric system," Dragos said in its report.