How worried should we be about Russia attacking Britain’s power grid?

Russian cyber attackers could target Britain’s power grids and ‘leave millions of people without power’, a senior minister has warned.

Speaking at a NATO conference on Monday, Cabinet Minister Pat McFadden warned that Russia was “stepping up” its nuclear weapons. Cyberattacks against Ukraine and its allies last year.

McFadden, whose job as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster includes national security, accused Moscow of targeting British media, telecommunications and energy infrastructure, saying Russian cyber attacks could “put out the lights for millions of people”.

It added that Russian state-affiliated groups have claimed responsibility for at least nine separate cyberattacks of varying severity against NATO countries, including unprovoked attacks on critical national infrastructure.

So could such an attack really work? So how would this happen? Yahoo spoke to cybersecurity experts about the threat of attacks on UK power.

How realistic is an attack on our power grid?

Cyberattacks on a global scale are not only realistic, they are already happening. The International Energy Agency predicts that attacks on energy infrastructure will double between 2020 and 2022, to 1,101 attacks per week worldwide.

In 2023, these attacks doubled again. Leonhard Birnbaum, CEO of utility E.ON, warned last year that Europe’s power grid was under a ‘deluge of cyber attacks’ since the invasion of Ukraine: “I’m worried now and will be even more worried in the future.”

The UK’s electricity system, sometimes called the national grid, consists of a number of networks spread across the country and operated by different companies. The ‘grid’ consists of wires and cables that transport electricity from where it is produced to the homes and businesses that use it 24/7.

While the idea of ​​attackers completely ‘shutdown’ power grids for long periods of time is dramatic, the reality is more nuanced, says Javvad Malik, a leading security awareness advocate at cybersecurity platform KnowBe4.

“Power grid cybersecurity is a serious concern, but it is important to understand both the risks and the safeguards available,” Malik told Yahoo News.

“Digitalization is increasing and systems are becoming more interconnected. “This connects previously isolated systems and potentially exposes them to new vulnerabilities.”

Malik says cybersecurity companies can already see “non-state groups” probing electrical systems through phishing attacks and other methods, but defenses are in place.

“There are a variety of mitigating factors that protect us from full-scale outages,” he says, noting that power plants are often designed with “multiple layers of redundancy and compartmentalization in place.” These additional layers of security include electrically isolated systems. each other to make it safer

“Having said that, it doesn’t mean it can’t happen. As power and other critical infrastructure modernizes, the need to balance security so that systems are available and secure increases.”

Lucy Easthope, a disaster planning expert and member of the Cabinet Office National Risk Assessment Behavioral Sciences Expert Group, warns that the UK should not underestimate such a threat.

“I don’t think we respect our enemies enough,” he told Yahoo News. “One of the things I have realized from working on various events is that we need to understand the capabilities of other countries and stop underestimating them.

“Inherent cyber risk (pipeline risk, cord-cutting risk) is an adversary that is willing to do many things, and sometimes in different ways, and therefore does things that can be extremely destructive.

“When people think of cyber attacks they think it means you can’t access the internet or something like that. But this is about things like power loss; loss of essential services; Loss of critical mass infrastructure.

“Cyber ​​is ultimately the method by which state terrorism is carried out. “This is scary in some ways (as much as nuclear war).”

What happens in the event of such an attack?

In the winter of 2015, Russian hackers used malware to attack the power grid in Kiev, causing a power outage.

Two hundred and thirty thousand people, one fifth of the population of Kiev, were left without electricity due to malware thought to have been deployed by the ‘Sandworm’ hacker group, the cyber warfare unit of Russia’s military intelligence agency.

Short-term power outages are possible in the UK, but long-term outages are much less likely.

“There were successful attacks on energy infrastructures, such as in Ukraine in 2015 and 2016,” says Malik. “These were limited in scope and duration. Long-term complete shutdowns of large-scale power grids remain largely theoretical.”

But that doesn’t mean the impact of a relatively conservative attack won’t be widely felt.

Dr. from the Center for Risk Research at Cambridge Judge Business School. According to analysis published by Edward Oughton in 2019, smaller-scale attacks can still have a significant impact.

Oughton warned at the time: “Critical national infrastructures, such as smart electricity networks, are vulnerable to malicious cyber attacks that can cause significant power outages and cascading failures affecting multiple business, healthcare and education organisations, as well as local supply.”

He said an attack like the one in Ukraine in 2015 – if it occurred in London – would affect around 1.5 million people and have an economic impact of up to £111 million per day if just 14 of the UK’s 300 substations were affected.

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