Security News > 2020 > January > Hackers Increasingly Probe North American Power Grid

Another group now focusing on the North American electricity generation sector is Magnallium, which since 2013 has been tied to attacks against energy and aerospace firms, Dragos says.

"It's easy to get the impression that people who operate the grid and are responsible for it are asleep at the wheel somehow, and there could be nothing further from the truth," Cowens, who's now the CSO of startup Utility Technology Solutions, tells Information Security Media Group.

All power grid operators must ensure they have defenses in place against the latest types of online attacks - including the latest malware, not least because wiper and blended attacks have previously been leveled at utilities, as Robert M. Lee, CEO of Dragos, has previously told ISMG. For example, the 2017 Industroyer - aka CrashOverride - attacks against utilities in Ukraine disrupted systems and demonstrated "The adversary's intent and ability to target protection and safety operations to cause prolonged outages, equipment destruction, and human health and safety concerns," Dragos says.

To date, ICS environments have been relatively immune to online attacks because every environment is unique, meaning that attackers bent on crashing a local power grid or some other environment would need time, money and patience to study the network and determine how to disrupt it, Sergio Caltagirone, director of threat intelligence and analytics at Dragos, has told ISMG. "Adversaries will continue to evolve and the industry must be ready to adapt." -Dragos.

Dragos does not link any of the attack groups it follow to a specific nation-state and does not publish deep-dive details on malware or attack techniques "Except in extraordinary circumstances in order to limit trade craft proliferation." But the groups it follows have been tied to Russia, North Korea and Iran.

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https://www.inforisktoday.com/hackers-increasingly-probe-north-american-power-grid-a-13596