Power Grid of U.S. Subjected to Continuous Foreign Hacks

The investigation started when Brian Wallace, a security researcher, found that hackers, probably in Iran, had oppressed vulnerability in the network that are running the power grid of U.S. and robbed passwords and engineering layout of many power plants. As per AP, minimum one document was marked as "Mission Critical", as published on December 21st, 2015, by fastcompany.com.

AP wrote: "the drawings were detailed in such a way that experts claim that trained assailant could have used them further with other malicious code and tools, to stop flowing of electricity to millions of homes in America."

In the past decade around a dozen times sophisticated overseas hackers have obtained sufficient remote access for controlling the networks of the operations which kept the lights on, top experts said only in case of inconspicuousness because of sensitivity of the matter.

Public have not been informed about these breaches. Information regarding response by the government about these hacks is mostly secured and occasionally kept confidential; even many of them are never brought to the knowledge of the government.

China and terrorist group of Islamic State are among other countries and organizations that are considered to be targeting power grids of US. Many contractors sell equipment and software to energy companies, and attackers have used those external companies successfully as a tool to access networks of the grid.

Robert Lee, an ex-cyberwarfare operations officer of U.S. Air Force, told AP that "if the geopolitical situation switches and Iran likes to spot these facilities, then such type of information will make it clearer. It will also comfort them stay peaceful and stealthy inside".

In spite of surge in cybersecurity measures, there is no perfect system to curtail the threat of attackers accessing the important systems. In view of several breaches, not each of the security experts considers that our national power infrastructure is immediately vulnerable to any risk of being attacked.

"Although the U.S. power grid seems to be under regular cyber attack, there have been no reported power outages applied to rogue nation-states". Experts have the same opinion that it would be immensely difficult for hackers to knock the country's power grid offline, but the same naysayers observed that cybersecurity risks are inflated.

» SPAMfighter News - 12/24/2015