In the recent past, news appeared of power plants hacking coming into the view for the first time. However, now with a drastic rise in power plants hacking, this dilemma is causing severe distress for not only the electric companies but also the consumers as well. How would it feel knowing that parts of the supply and distribution system are in someone else’s hands and they can use it to exploit the public or ask for their demands to be fulfilled?
Russian power plants came into the spotlight amongst the first to be hacked but guess what: now there is a rise in power plants hacking in USA and UK too! A renowned company known as Symantec which is a security company has shockingly revealed that a hacking group named Dragonfly, which is involved in many severe hacking attacks in recent past, has taken control over dozens of energy firms and have successfully installed backdoors on the most integrated power systems around the globe. Eric Chien who is the technical director at Symantec security response and technology division reported:
“What’s most concerning is we now see them intruding on operational networks of energy companies. Before, we were talking about them being one step away, and what we see now is that they are potentially in those networks and are zero steps away. There are no more technical hurdles for them to jump over.”
The rise in power plants hacking has caused a severe issue for energy companies’ energy assets and resources handling. Last but not the least, Symantec has warned further that just removing the malwares or backdoors installed by hackers would not be enough to solve or tackle this issue. This is because the hackers have all the passwords and credentials to install these again. So stay tuned to our news to get update on how power companies might solve this issue.