The December 2016 cyberattack on Ukraine's power grid, orchestrated by Russian hackers, caused a significant but brief blackout. Recent research by Dragos reveals that the intention was to inflict devastating damage to the infrastructure, not just cause temporary disruption. The malware could have triggered prolonged outages once power was restored, leveraging the recovery process against the utility. This attack highlights a shift in the capabilities of cyber threats, similar to infamous previous attacks like Stuxnet and Triton, targeting physical infrastructure.
While this ended up being a direct disruptive event, the tools deployed and the sequence in which they were used strongly indicate that the attackers aimed for something more devastating.
Researchers have reconstructed a timeline of the 2016 blackout attack, revealing that the hackers intended not merely a short-lived disruption but potentially lasting damage.
Collection
[
|
...
]