Security News > 2020 > May > Cyber attack against UK power grid middleman Elexon sparks in-house IT recovery efforts

An important middleman in the UK's electrical power grid has suffered a cyber attack, though the lights are still on across good old Blighty.

Elexon, which reconciles electricity supply to the National Grid and issues bills for undersupply or oversupply, was struck by what appears to be a partially contained ransomware attack, judging by its effects on the company's operations.

Briefly, Elexon captures data to figure out whether power generation companies owe extra to National Grid for undersupplying at key times or whether the grid owes them cash for requiring less electricity than forecast.

The National Grid said in a Twitter post addressing Elexon's outage: "Electricity supply is not affected. We have robust cybersecurity measures across our IT and operational infrastructure to protect against cyber threats."

Fluctuations in grid frequency, for example, can have earth-shattering - nay, train-halting - effects, as rail operator Thameslink found out the hard way in 2019, when almost its entire fleet of Siemens Desiro City trains sat down after the grid frequency dropped to 48.8Hz instead of its nominal 50.0Hz frequency, following a lightning strike.

News URL

https://go.theregister.co.uk/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/15/elexon_cyber_attack/