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Cyberattack suspected in Ukraine power outage
Ukraine's national power company investigates whether hacking caused blackout in Kiev
Security experts are investigating whether a power outage that affected parts of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and the surrounding region this weekend was the result of a cyberattack. If confirmed, it would be the second blackout caused by hackers in Ukraine.
The incident affected the automation control systems at the northern power substation near Novi Petrivtsi, a village near Kiev, close to midnight between Saturday and Sunday. This resulted in complete power loss for the northern part of Kiev on the right bank of the Dnieper river and the surrounding region.
Engineers from Ukrenergo, Ukraine's national power company, switched the equipment to manual control mode and started restoring power within 30 minutes, said Vsevolod Kovalchuk, acting director of Ukrenergo, in a post on Facebook. Full power was restored to all affected areas in about an hour and 15 minutes.
One suspected cause is "external interference through the data network," Kovalchuk said. The company's cybersecurity experts are investigating and will release a report.
Among the possible causes for the crash are hacking and faulty equipment, Ukrenergo said in a statement. Law enforcement agencies have been alerted and are carrying out a thorough investigation. Until the results come back, all the systems that have automatic control have been switched to local control, the company said.
If the hacking is confirmed, this would be the second time that power has been disrupted in Ukraine because of a cyberattack. Almost a year ago, shortly before Christmas, hackers launched a coordinated attack against three Ukrainian regional power companies. They managed to switch off power at multiple substations, causing blackouts that lasted between three and 6 hours and impacted the residents in several regions.
The Ukrainian security service, the SBU, attributed the attack at the time to Russia. Even though there's no definitive evidence that links the attacks to the Russian government, the attackers used a piece of malware of Russian origin called BlackEnergy, and the attack's complexity suggests the involvement of a nation state.
Last week, researchers from security vendor ESET warned about recent attacks against high-value targets from the Ukrainian financial sector that were carried out by a group that shares many similarities with the BlackEnergy group.
Power outages are common in wintertime in former USSR countries, because of old equipment, so additional information is needed before reaching a conclusion about the cause of this weekend's blackout, said Alex Mathews, Lead Security Evangelist at vulnerability assessment and compliance management company Positive Technologies. "On the other hand, we should recognize that the chances of successful cyberattacks on power grids are growing in the modern world due to the Internet," he said.
http://www.pcworld.com/ar(...)ne-power-outage.htmlquote:
Heavy artillery and tank fire returns to the front lines in Ukraine
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An international monitoring group documented almost 3,000 explosions in the region Sunday - up from 700 on Saturday and 100 on Friday. The majority of Sunday's detonations were recorded around Svitlodarsk. Despite multiple cease-fire attempts and efforts to remove heavy weapons from the front lines, the day-long bombardment, which included tanks, rocket artillery and howitzers, laid bare the shortcomings of international efforts to quell the conflict.
The fighting sent the residents of Svitlodarsk to their basements, and around nightfall, as temperatures dipped below freezing, the town lost power and gas. Utilities were restored around midnight, according to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has observers on the ground.
Social media accounts that follow the conflict indicated that shelling in the area started again Monday night.
https://www.stripes.com/n(...)-in-ukraine-1.445305quote:
Russia's Gazprom And Ukraine Back At Each Other's Throats
So much for Naftogaz and Gazprom playing nice. The energy giants, which are basically stand-ins for official Kiev and Moscow, are back at each other's throats with Ukraine's Naftogaz saying Monday that Russia might even stop natural gas deliveries to European via Ukraine this winter.
Gazprom said today that sees "some risks for gas transit" through Ukraine to Europe -- its main pipelines into the region -- and warned that if Naftogaz delivered Russian gas to those markets unauthorized it would cut off supplies, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller told reporters in Moscow.
"There are risks for gas transit to Europe (via Ukraine). In the contract, which was signed in 2009, we clearly fixed all cases of force majeure. If Ukraine starts gas tapping, then we can either reduce supply by the volume of illegally taken gas or can carry out a disproportionate reduction. But we may stop deliveries all together even after a single unauthorized tapping of gas," Miller was quoted as saying in the TASS news agency.
Naftogaz said Miller was created a crisis where there was none, adding that it is likely designed to exert pressure on the EU regarding its decision on Gazprom's other pipelines, namely Nord Stream II and Turkish Stream.
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http://www.forbes.com/sit(...)hroats/#5abc31da760b