2016 Kyiv cyberattack

Cyberattack on a power grid in Kyiv, Ukraine

A cyberattack happened in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv just before midnight on 17 December 2016, and lasted for just over an hour.[1] The national electricity transmission operator Ukrenergo said that the attack had cut one fifth of the city's power consumption at that time of night.[1]

Attack

The attack affected the electrical substation at Pivnichna, outside the capital.[1] It happened a year after a previous attack on Ukraine's power grid.[1]

Dragos Security concluded that the attack was not merely to cause short-term disruption but to cause long-lasting damage that could last weeks or months.[2] The attackers had tried to cause physical damage to the station when the operators turned the grid back on.[2] The attack used Industroyer malware and has the ability to attack hardware including SIPROTEC protective relays.[2] These protective relays open circuit breakers if they detect dangerous conditions.[2] A security flaw meant that a single packet could put the relays in a state where it would be useless unless manually rebooted.[2] Siemens released a software patch in 2015 to fix the issue, but many relays weren't updated with it.[2] Evidence from logs obtained by Dragos Security showed the attackers initially opened every circuit breaker in the transmission station, causing a power cut.[2] Then an hour later they ran wiper malware to disable the station's computer, making it impossible to monitor the station.[2] Finally, the attackers tried to disable four of the stations SIPROTEC protective relays, which could not be detected by operators.[2] Dragos concluded that the attackers intended the operators to re-engergise the station equipment, which could have injured engineers and damaged equipment.[2] The data packets intended for the protective relays were sent to the wrong IP address.[2] The operators may also have brought the station back online faster than attackers expected.[2]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Ukraine power cut 'was cyber-attack'". BBC News. 2017-01-11. Retrieved 2022-07-07.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Greenberg, Andy (2019-09-12). "New Clues Show How Russia's Grid Hackers Aimed for Physical Destruction". Wired. Archived from the original on 2019-09-13. Retrieved 2022-07-07.