US Power Grid Under Hacker Attack, Fingers Point to China and Russia

On 08 Apr 2009

The United States power grid needs to be protected from outside attacks, especially cyber attacks if you want to prevent people with malicious intent from delivering targeted blackouts for example. This fact has been emphasized when security experts and authorities talked about the Smart Power Grid, and has been doubly emphasized by the recent reports of hacking attacks on the US power grid.

According to US national security officials, Russian and Chinese cyber spies have hacked into the electrical grid and sneaked in software that could potentially disrupt the whole system. According to a senior intelligence officer, the goal behind the Chinese and Russian cyber spies’ actions was to map the US infrastructure. To make things worse, these attacks are not isolated – the number of hacking attempts is increasing lately and it is putting the electrical systems as well as the nuclear power plants, financial networks, water and sewage systems in jeopardy.

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It must be said that the hackings did not disrupt the US power grid until now, nor did they target a specific region or company; it must also be said that the attacks do not originate solely from China and Russia, they come from several other countries as well. Officials believe the hackers might try to disrupt the grid given certain conditions – such as a crisis of war.

Russian and Chinese officials have stated that the countries they represent had nothing to do with the cyber attacks. The spokesperson from the Russian Embassy, Yevgeniy Khorishko, said these reports are nothing more than pure speculation while the spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Wang Baodong, stated these are lies and fabrications.

In recent news, it has come to light that the Pentagon spent a total of $100 million over the past 6 months on repairing damage caused by cyber attacks and responding to the aforementioned attacks. The money, as reported by Army Brig. Gen. John Davis, went to paying for manpower, computer technology, contractors, and cleaning up messes caused by internal mistakes as well as external attacks.

Tags: Hacker, Smart Grid, China, Russia

About the author: George Norman

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