Ukraine’s national power company Ukrenergo says a blackout in Kiev on December 17 and 18, 2016 was caused by a cyber attack, Reuters reports.
Preliminary findings from an investigation determined that workstations and SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems at a 330 kilowatt substation were hit by external attackers.
The company hasn’t said whether it has linked the attack to any specific group or nation state.
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Krotofil said the attackers hid in Ukrenergo’s network undetected for six months before they caused the blackout. “The team involved had quite a few people working in it, with very serious tools and an engineer who understands the power infrastructure,” she said.
A previous cyber attack in December 2015, blamed on Russian hackers, caused blackouts affecting 225,000 people in western Ukraine and damaged power distribution equipment.
We ask this simple question: How vulnerable is Nigeria’s electricity infrastructure to cyber-attack? Is the nation prepared for this type of attack? Or that since we are used to blackout, that it does not really matter.
